(1214) Preliminary Results from a Content Review of Online Hypertension Discussion Forums: a New Approach to Accessing Patient Beliefs About Medications

Objectives: Chronic conditions require ongoing care, including self-care. Beliefs about medications have shown to be associated with behaviors related to self-care. Prior studies have examined changes in beliefs about medications over time, evaluated beliefs about medicines and medication use, and investigated the associations between medication beliefs and adherence to chronic drug therapy. Although studies have systematically assessed patient beliefs about medications, primarily through surveys, none have studied beliefs in peer-to-peer unmoderated arenas such as online discussion boards. This in-progress study aims to provide a snapshot of discussions in an online forum for hypertension medicines to unveil the beliefs of patients taking these medications. The objective of this study is to identify themes surrounding patient beliefs and behaviors relating to hypertension and medication use.

Methods: This qualitative study evaluates content from the MedHelp hypertension forum, as the first of multiple sites being analyzed within a larger study looking at hypertension and diabetes websites. Posts under this hypertension community forum were randomly selected, with various search ranges within the prior three years. Data are being analyzed using line-by-line open coding via the grounded theory method. Open coding will be conducted first to attribute an “out-of-context'' descriptive quality to each individual comment or thought in a given post. Initial coding will be completed by two separate investigators, followed by a more focused coding to unveil broad, overarching themes and consistency. Themes will then be reviewed independently by the third investigator to assess consistency and obtain substantive, related, supporting quotes; this will include a further categorization of two key threads within each of the themes: beliefs and behaviors. These threads will serve as a framework for the reporting of data. This study has been submitted and approved by the St. John Fisher University institutional review board.

Results: Results are pending data analysis.

Conclusions: Findings may indicate how patients from this study perceive their medications and their attitudes toward managing a chronic disease state, in their own words. This could provide clinicians with additional areas of insight into patients’ coping with hypertension and their medication self-management. Furthermore, these results will provide the foundation for a larger qualitative study evaluating beliefs about medications discussed in online forums for those with hypertension.