At the regional level, the Joint National Committee (JNC) recommends lifestyle modifications for hypertensive patients over a six-month period. These modifications include increased physical activity, dietary changes for obese patients, reduced salt intake, and limited alcohol consumption (de la Sierra, 2019). The PREMIER trial, the largest clinical trial in the US evaluating blood pressure management through lifestyle changes, demonstrated that weight loss, increased physical activity, and improved dietary choices effectively controlled hypertension without the need for medication (Mahmood et al., 2019). While both lifestyle modifications and medications can lower blood pressure within six months, medications may manifest side effects during this period (Kebede et al., 2022).
Resources:
Healthcare teams can utilize social media messages, fact sheets, and handouts to educate obese hypertensive patients about lifestyle modifications.
Potential Services:
Care teams, consisting of nurses, physicians, pharmacists, information technology specialists, and hospital administrators, can collectively raise awareness among obese hypertensive patients about adopting healthy lifestyle choices. Telehealth can be employed to monitor patients’ compliance with prescribed lifestyle changes (Volterrani & Sposato, 2019).
Barriers:
Several obstacles hinder the care coordination process, including patients’ lack of trust in healthcare professionals, inability to engage in self-management practices, challenges related to health information technology, resource constraints, patient beliefs, motivation, and depression (Heinert et al., 2019).
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), care coordination is underpinned by five pillars, which include teamwork between staff and patients, effective health information technology utilization, care and medication management, and patient-centered care (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2018).
Specific and Practical Way
To educate obese hypertensive patients about appropriate lifestyle adjustments, healthcare professionals should utilize the Chronic Care Model. Healthcare organizations need to foster responsibility and accountability, holding regular meetings with key stakeholders such as nurses, physicians, nutritionists, pharmacists, and information technologists. These meetings facilitate communication, knowledge exchange, goal development, and evidence-based care planning (Pilipovic-Broceta et al., 2018). After the planning phase, stakeholders should proceed to implement the plan, assist patients in achieving self-management goals, and conduct follow-up assessments (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2018).
Support the Strategy for Collaborative Care
A collaborative care strategy should prioritize lifestyle modifications as the primary intervention for healthcare staff and nurses diagnosing hypertension induced by obesity. Overweight hypertensive patients are at greater risk of severe hypertension-related outcomes if they fail to implement lifestyle changes (Csige et al., 2018). Effective collaboration among stakeholders is essential to persuade hypertensive obese individuals to adopt lifestyle changes for optimal health outcomes.
NURS FPX 6614 Assessment 1 Defining a Gap in Practice
Collaboration is facilitated through Team-based Care (TBC), where care coordinators organize regular meetings to set goals and targets for obese hypertensive patients, involving all stakeholders. Nurses, physicians, information technology specialists, nutritionists, physiotherapists, and executives collectively contribute novel ideas (Liu et al., 2019). Nutritionists can devise evidence-based dietary plans, physiotherapists can design suitable exercise regimens, and IT specialists can enhance inter-professional collaboration through technologies such as HIPAA Compliant Text Messaging Platforms and telehealth (Liu et al., 2019).
Example of Strategies
Kreps (2018) recommended a valuable strategy for interdisciplinary teams to work collaboratively for improved health outcomes. This strategy involves the active participation of healthcare providers, administrators, nutritionists, information technology specialists, and consumers in the care process. Team meetings should be held regularly to share relevant patient information, make decisions, establish group interaction norms, introduce new information, distribute responsibilities, encourage diverse perspectives, and discuss