Abstract

PATIENT ADHERENCE

Syeda Zuleqaunnisa Begum* and Syeda Asra

ABSTRACT

Compliance can be confused with concordance, which is the process by which a patient and clinician make decisions together about treatment. When talking about patient compliance (also adherence, capacitance) describes the degree to which a patient correctly follows medical advice. Most commonly, it refers to medication or drug compliance, but it can also apply to other situations such as medical device use, self care, self-directed exercises, or therapy sessions. Both patient and health-care provider affect compliance, and a positive physician-patient relationship is the most important factor in improving compliance, the cost of prescription medication also plays a major role. As the first step toward improving adherence, there needs to be a broader recognition of the problem of nonadherence, and once identified, simple strategies should be implemented in daily practice to improve adherence. Certainly, there are still many challenges in further understanding the reasons for nonadherence and designing better interventions to improve adherence; however, getting patients to take their medication as prescribed is a worthy goal in order for patients to derive the maximal benefit of prescribed therapies and is also highly consistent with one of the Institute of Medicine‟s goals of care of patient centeredness.

Keywords: .