Standardised measurement of home BP What type of BP device to use? This topic is extensively addressed in several international guidelines, 2–4 including an Australian consensus statement 5 in which evidence is provided to show that home BP monitoring offers advantages beyond clinic BP measurement in terms of: It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed rationale for using home BP monitoring in general practice. Pragmatic resources for ease of clinical implementation are also provided.

The purpose of this article is to provide a practical summary guide for Australian healthcare professionals and their patients on how to measure home BP using a standardised, evidence-based protocol. A standardised approach to measuring home BP is recommended to help minimise error. Home BP monitoring is already in widespread use, 1 but many factors can affect the reliability of BP readings. While 24-hour ambulatory BP monitoring is the gold standard method to assess BP control, it is not always practical to use this in general practice. Home blood pressure (BP) monitoring, the self-measurement of BP in the home, away from a medical environment, provides a greater number of BP readings that are more reliable for assessment of true underlying BP than clinic BP measurement.