Written by Manuel Seraydarian
For a relationship to remain in good condition, two people usually follow some basic understanding or code of trust, commitment, and loyalty, without which leads to a partnership besieged by dishonesty and deceit. They sometimes cooperate effortlessly to uphold their unity between themselves, but other times, they fail to see the point of it all. Clouded by negligence, passivity, and an inclination to perform an absent role leads to an inevitable dissolution of their once-venerated bond. Just as the two people might be guilty of disregarding the code of trust, commitment, and loyalty, patients across the globe are similarly guilty of noncomplying with their significant other: medication.
“Medical adherence” is the voluntary association between a patient and medication for a medical regimen in order to obtain a completed therapeutic result, as outlined by a healthcare provider; in contrast, “medical compliance” is the patient’s willingness to complete the specified regimen [1]. The best form of nonadherence comes in the form of “non-persistence” and “non-conformity.” Non-persistence occurs when a patient stops taking medication, sometimes unintentionally, due to the lack of comprehension of the disease, minimal medical literacy, failure of a physician in clarifying the necessity of the medication, or even due to financial concerns [2]. Non-conformity arises when a patient skips doses, or takes medication, but at incorrect times or doses, either intentionally or accidentally [1].
A very common occurrence seen in patient adherence is when the physical symptoms of some illnesses subside, without the illness being eradicated on a cellular and molecular level, causing patients to believe that the illness is gone. This signal allows them to assume that they do not have to complete the regimen, based off of only a visible impression. This poses a complication because it is one of the reasons, for instance, behind the rise of antibiotic resistance. By providing the opportunity for microbes to resurface as a result of incomplete total drug activity, the medication initially prescribed becomes useless as it paves the way for disease progression instead [1].
In order to improve medical nonadherence, some strategies employed involves higher medical education and awareness, a pictorial medication schedule, a simplification of a complex medical regimen, an ongoing completely informative discourse between the patient and the healthcare provider, access to health insurance, and a patient’s readiness to participate in the trust that a physician has a heightened sense of judgement about the duration and dosage of a type of medication [2]. Subsequently, in order to alleviate the pain of illnesses, patients need to have a resolute sense of obligation for self-betterment. It is your body and you have only a definite amount of opportunities to preserve it from deterioration.
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