Importance Of Medication Compliance

1. What is medication Compliance?

Medications are important part of patient’s life, in that without compliance or adherence to once prescribed medication, the patient’s disease will linger on and cause more complications in their body. Medication compliance is one of the most important topics discussed with the patients. Medication compliance has been described as the ability of the patient to follow correctly prescribed medication. Compliance of medication does not only point out prescription drugs but any therapeutic and medical equipment such as spacers, braces, crutches walkers among others recommended by the physician or nurse practitioner. Medication adherence also addresses the correct prescribed dose of the medication. Ideally, patients

Reasons For non-compliance

• Denial of the problem. Sometimes patients are diagnosed with a disease or condition and they easily ignore it. This is true for diseases that are asymptomatic, which means symptoms of the condition or disease are not noticeable in the patient. For instance, some patients with high blood pressure may not show symptoms that get in the way of everyday life. Some patients may not even know they have the condition until they go to the doctor for a follow up appointment. This makes it easy for patients to ignore the prescribed treatment regimens.

• The cost of the treatment. Sometimes the medications are not covered by insurance, so this makes it difficult to patients to adhere to buying the drugs because they don’t have the money to afford it.

• The difficulty of the regimen. Some patients may have problems following directions, for instance; it may be difficult for a patient to wake up in the middle of the night and take a pill, or if they are taking several pills at the same time, they may get confused about which pill to take at a specific

One can use this communication route to address common adherence obstacles at the onset before adherence becomes a problem for your patient. These barriers can be addressed by:

• Emphasizing the Value of the Regimen and the positive effect of adherence. Nurses have the right to emphasize the value of the medication regimen and explain the effect of compliance and noncompliance to their patients. Though patients have the right to refuse their medications, its adherence or compliance benefits the patients more. Nurses are to educate patients who are weighing the medication's costs and benefits, adverse reactions, and perceived efficacy on the need to take their medications that help reduce side effect. In this regard the patients feel safe.

• Listening to your Patient's Concerns about his or her Ability to Follow the Regimen. Nurses can recognize concerns of patients, such as cost of their medications or confusion about the similarities in color of their medications, the names of the medications which are not easy to remember, and the timing of dosage. The nurse will then help the patient seek support in that area of concerns raised by encouraging the patients to call their