Medical Adherence Versus Compliance

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According to the definition provided by World Health Organization (WHO), medical adherence is “the degree to which the person’s behavior corresponds with the agreed recommendations from a health care provider”. Medication ‘Adherence’ substitutes the old term compliance .Adherence and Compliance has two different meaning, hence they are different from each other in terms of patient’s action towards their therapeutic plan. Compliance can be defined as the expanse at which a patients attitude, character and behavior is according to the health care provider’s medical advice. On the other hand, adherence is the collaboration between the patient and prescriber /health care provider. Therefore, in order to attain a successful medication adherence, …show more content…

It is a situation where the physician will give a list of medication (prescription), which is not filled nor consumed by the patient. Next, is non persistence adherence where the patient suddenly decides stop consuming the medication without even discussing with their health care provider. This commonly happens unintentionally and rarely intentionally. It happens unintentionally due to patient’s limitation in terms of money/cost, distance need to travel to attain/refill the prescribed medicine, plus due to their coercion like remembering the number of tablets needed to be taken a day, poor skill in administering insulin and many more. On the other hand, intentional non adherence occurs due to miscommunication about the therapeutic plan between the patient and also health care provider. Last type of non adherence happens when the patients do not take their prescribed medication according to the prescriber’s advice. This happens when patient skip their doses, consume medication at incorrect time of the day, plus consume more medication than it was prescribed to the patients. This happens due to negligence and also false belief by improving their health …show more content…

For an example, by proving video, step by step guide on how to administer drug and many more. Other than that, the physician / doctor or even pharmacists should try not to make them feel guilty for not following the regimen adherently but rather just motivate them by giving positive feedback or comment. Besides that, maybe the healthcare professional can work together with the patient to create a therapeutic goal and make sure to follow the progress of that patient. Lastly, by involving the patient’s family members (spouse, children, siblings, and caretaker) can reduce and also avoid medication non

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