Date of Conferral

5-30-2025

Date of Award

May 2025

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Kristina Bohm

Abstract

When medical staff lack sufficient training in hypertension literacy, it significantly impacts patient outcomes, expenses, and quality of life. Uncontrolled hypertension increases health care costs by causing frequent emergency room visits and hospital stays. After a thorough needs assessment, it was identified at the project site that nurse practitioners were not knowledgeable about the most recent recommendations for managing hypertension and patient education techniques. This practice gap was also contributed to by a lack of structured training and time for learning. The practice-focused question for this project was: Among health care staff, how does implementing a staff education initiative on hypertension management, compared to the current standard practice, affect the provision of knowledge of hypertension management? This project aimed to increase provider health literacy through evidence-based practices, standardized education, and training. The program featured interactive training sessions backed by the Hypertension Evaluation of Lifestyle and Management (HELM) knowledge evaluation tool to measure staff knowledge gains before and after the intervention. Five nurses completed a pretest before and a posttest following the staff education program. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and paired samples t-test statistics through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software. The findings reveal that provider competency increases through focused, easily accessible training, as demonstrated by p = .030, implying the results are statistically significant When medical staff lack sufficient training in hypertension literacy, it significantly impacts patient outcomes, expenses, and quality of life. Uncontrolled hypertension increases health care costs by causing frequent emergency room visits and hospital stays. After a thorough needs assessment, it was identified at the project site that nurse practitioners were not knowledgeable about the most recent recommendations for managing hypertension and patient education techniques. This practice gap was also contributed to by a lack of structured training and time for learning. The practice-focused question for this project was: Among health care staff, how does implementing a staff education initiative on hypertension management, compared to the current standard practice, affect the provision of knowledge of hypertension management? This project aimed to increase provider health literacy through evidence-based practices, standardized education, and training. The program featured interactive training sessions backed by the Hypertension Evaluation of Lifestyle and Management (HELM) knowledge evaluation tool to measure staff knowledge gains before and after the intervention. Five nurses completed a pretest before and a posttest following the staff education program. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and paired samples t-test statistics through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software. The findings reveal that provider competency increases through focused, easily accessible training, as demonstrated by p = .030, implying the results are statistically significant. Providers’ knowledge of managing hypertension, including lifestyle change counseling, guideline-based therapy, and patient education that considers cultural sensitivity, has improved with the potential to improve hypertension management leading to better patient outcomes. Providers’ knowledge of managing hypertension, including lifestyle change counseling, guideline-based therapy, and patient education that considers cultural sensitivity, has improved, with the potential to improve hypertension management and lead to better patient outcomes.

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