Patient Compliance with Medications: Issues and Opportunities

Patients who use over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription medicine often do not take the drugs as intended, sometimes to the detriment to their health and well-being. These widespread problems cause health professionals to agonize over how to try to make sure patients comply with medication instructions. Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities tackles this tough issue by exploring in detail the range of noncompliance behavior, the negative impacts the behavior has on patients as well as society at large, and practical ways to influence people to take their medicine for optimum health. Respected pharmacist and author Jack Fincham and other noted experts provide insights, surprising data, and effective solutions to a challenge nearly all health professionals encounter.

Patients often use drugs they get from a multitude of sources, making the capability of monitoring drug use difficult. Other problems can also interfere with a patient's health, such as a patient borrowing drugs from family or friends—or even not taking them at all simply because he or she are unable to pay for them. Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities goes beyond the standard pat explanations and mostly ineffective quick solutions usually offered for the complicated noncompliance issue. Leading authorities describe the range of reasons for a patient's behavior and provide practical strategies that strike at the root of the problem. Helpful tables, figures, and extensive references are also included.

Topics in Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities include:

• The prevalence of noncompliance
• Costs of noncompliance
• Drug therapies that lead to noncompliance
• Measuring compliance
• Models to evaluate patient compliance
• Evaluation methods
• Ethical considerations
• Health professionals' roles in compliance
• Disease state management
• Future considerations
• Much more

Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities is insightful, crucial information for health professionals, educators, and students.

Improve your patient’s health through a fresh view of their behaviors

Patients who use over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription medicine often do not take the drugs as intended, sometimes to the detriment to their health and well-being. These widespread problems cause health professionals to agonize over how to try to make sure patients comply with medication instructions. Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities tackles this tough issue by exploring in detail the range of noncompliance behavior, the negative impacts the behavior has on patients as well as society at large, and practical ways to influence people to take their medicine for optimum health. Respected pharmacist and author Jack Fincham and other noted experts provide insights, surprising data, and effective solutions to a challenge nearly all health professionals encounter.

Patients often use drugs they get from a multitude of sources, making the capability of monitoring drug use difficult. Other problems can also interfere with a patient’s health, such as a patient borrowing drugs from family or friends—or even not taking them at all simply because he or she are unable to pay for them. Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities goes beyond the standard pat explanations and mostly ineffective quick solutions usually offered for the complicated noncompliance issue. Leading authorities describe the range of reasons for a patient’s behavior and provide practical strategies that strike at the root of the problem. Helpful tables, figures, and extensive references are also included.

Topics in Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities include:

• the prevalence of noncompliance
• costs of noncompliance
• drug therapies that lead to noncompliance
• measuring compliance
• models to evaluate patient compliance
• evaluation methods
• ethical considerations
• health professionals’ roles in compliance
• disease state management
• future considerations
• much more

Patient Compliance with Medication: Issues and Opportunities is insightful, crucial information for health professionals, educators, and students.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Patrick J. McDonnell, PharmD(Temple University School of Pharmacy)
Description:This is an overview of the overwhelming problem of patient noncompliance with drug therapy.
Purpose:The purpose is to expose readers to a wide variety of issues surrounding patient noncompliance with their medication therapy. From the initial chapters exploring the scope of noncompliance, the author identifies factors affecting noncompliance and the resultant consequences of this behavior. The identification of these problems certainly allows readers to start to identify solutions.
Audience:The book is written for anyone in healthcare, not just practitioners, as it focuses not only on clinical issues with noncompliance but also on the societal and economic impact of noncompliance. The lay public would find it easy to read for most the most part. The many authors include representatives from pharmacy academia specializing in issues such as patient compliance, pharmacoeconomics, pharmacoepidemiology, and outcomes research.
Features:An introduction to the scope of the problem of noncompliance begins the book. Subsequent chapters examine some of the "whys" of noncompliance, looking at social and behavioral issues. Other chapters focus on topics such as the measurement and evaluation of noncompliance. Probably the most important two chapters are the ones on methods to impact compliance and the role of healthcare professionals in accomplishing just that. As with most multiauthored books, some chapters are better written than others. I preferred the chapters that offered information on how to fix the problem of noncompliance over those recapitulating other researchers' findings on the scope of the problem.
Assessment:This book does accomplish the task of making readers aware of the many different facets of noncompliance and it is well referenced for those who which to explore specific issues further. However, the book identifies more issues than opportunities, and I prefer Rantucci's Pharmacists Talking with Patients: A Guide to Patient Counseling, 2nd edition (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007) which tackles issues to amend the problems revolving around patient compliance.