Objective: To describe SF-36 quality of life and explore differences in quality-of-life level distributions across selected characteristics among outpatients with hypertension at Thai Nguyen National Hospital in 2025.
Methods: A cross-sectional study included 222 adults with hypertension receiving outpatient care at Thai Nguyen National Hospital from January to October 2025. Quality of life was assessed through face-to-face interviews using a Vietnamese version of the SF-36. Its eight domains were transformed to 0–100 scales. The physical-domain group, mental-domain group, and overall scores were arithmetic means of the relevant domains rather than norm-based component summary scores. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square tests were used; p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: The overall quality-of-life score was 58.88 ± 18.41. The mean physical-domain and mental-domain group scores were 58.80 ± 19.58 and 58.96 ± 18.45, respectively. Bodily pain (67.85) and physical functioning (65.59) had the highest domain scores, whereas general health was lowest (43.07). Under the study’s operational cut-offs, 76.6% of participants were classified at a moderate level, 23.0% at a high level, and 0.5% at a low level. No selected characteristic was significantly associated with the overall quality-of-life level (all p > 0.05). The physical-domain level distribution differed by place of residence (p < 0.001), but sparse cells require cautious interpretation.
Conclusions: Quality of life among these hypertensive outpatients was moderate according to the study’s operational classification, and general health was the lowest-scoring domain. The bivariate residence finding is exploratory and does not support causal inference.