Improving patient compliance by understanding some etiologies of non-compliance

Abstract

Compliance stands between the physician and the successful treatment of the patient. The physician labors to accumulate, update, master, and apply a vast and growing store of medical knowledge and to communicate well-founded diagnostic and treatment recommendations to patients. Patients come to physicians with physical and psychological pain and disability. If recommendations are not utilized, pain and disability persist. The rates of compliance with the whole range of medical recommendations, from smoking cessation to medication, is surprisingly low. Non-compliance with medical advice is enormously frustrating to physicians. Careful analysis of the reasons for non-compliance—cognitive deficits, miscommunications, language barriers, unvoiced fears, financial difficulties—turns non-compliance into a treatable problem.