Functional Social Support for Hypertensive Patients in Primary Care Setting in Poland: What Is Expected and What Is...

To measure expected and received functional social support (FSS) from doctors, nurses, and family members in the population of patients with primary arterial hypertension and to explore the gap between the expected and received support.

This cross-sectional study involved 232 adults in a primary arterial hypertension group and 115 healthy individuals in a control group. The sample was drawn from six family doctor surgeries in Szczecin, Poland. Three categories of expected and received FSS were examined, that is, emotional, informational, and instrumental, using the self-administered questionnaire. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the means of received and expected support from different sources. Indexes of adequacy of FSS were established.

A deep deficit of emotional support and a smaller deficit of informational and instrumental support from family members were observed in both groups. Hypertensive patients reported receiving a higher level of emotional and informational support than expected from doctors. Instrumental support from doctors and all three types of support from nurses met hypertensive patients' expectations. Healthy controls reported a distinct deficit in all kinds of support from doctors and nurses. Their expectations of informational and instrumental support from health professionals, and from family, were higher than those of the hypertensive patients.

The study hypothesis predicting that Polish patients will perceive FSS received from family members as adequate and observe deficiencies in support from doctors and nurses was not confirmed. The low level of perceived emotional support from family requires attention from health educators to alleviate this deficiency.