Volume 5 Issue 2 Feb 2015
Building Compliance: An Important Skill
Everyone of us, as health care provider, wish our patients to be ‘compliant’ with us. Any patient showing resistance to therapeutic advice is viewed as a great challenge & is criticized for.. Compliance (also adherence, capacitance) describes the degree to which a patient correctly follows medical advice. Most commonly, it is applied to medication schedule, but it can also be described in other situations such as medical device use, self care, self-directed exercises, or therapy sessions.
Worldwide, non-compliance is a major obstacle to the effective delivery of health care not only in psychiatry but in all specialties. Both the patient and the health-care provider affect compliance.
A positive physician-patient relationship is the most important factor in improving compliance. It can help to improve major barriers including complexity of modern medication regimens, poor “health literacy” and lack of comprehension of treatment benefits, the occurrence of undiscussed side effects, the cost of prescription medicine, and poor communication or lack of trust between the patient and his or her health-care provider. One should always make efforts to improve compliance by simplifying medication packaging, providing effective medication reminders, improving patient education, and limiting the number of medications prescribed simultaneously. Let’s acquire these skills to build up the compliance instead expecting it completely from patients.
Assistant Professor, MGMIHS, Navi Mumbai
