Only part three, the individual interviews, has been carried out. We have not been able to get funding to complete the rest of the study.

The purpose of the study is to get an understanding about what problems patients with hypertension are facing, how they manage these challenges, how they feel and what requirements they believe are important to have in their treatment. These factors will later act as a foundation and incentive for designing an intervention that may result in more patients achieving blood pressure control with maintained quality of life.

This is a Swedish observational mixed-methods study to get an understanding about what problems patients with hypertension are facing. The information will act as a foundation for designing an intervention/interventions that may result in more patients achieving blood pressure control with maintained quality of life. Patients, who have well/not well controlled blood pressure, are to fill in questionnaires about their view on ability to perform self-care and their perceived quality of life. Individual interviews will also be made about for what reasons they do or do not change lifestyle as well as take their drugs to treat their hypertension. In focus group interviews the patients are to be asked about what they want and expect in the encounter with health care personnel, what other things outside the health care area would be helpful for the patient and how age, gender, cultural and psychosocial aspects affect the ability to achieve blood pressure control. The developed future interventions will be evaluated in clinical practice.

Inclusion Criteria:

• diagnosed with hypertension since 9 months
• being able to read and speak Swedish

Exclusion Criteria:

-

To preserve that the population is representative for an area in southern Sweden, patients are to be included consequtively through stratified sampling regarding age, gender and treatment at health centre or medical clinic at a hospital as well as geographically.