Medicine partnerships

Abstract

Partial medication compliance, where patients do not take enough of their prescribed medicine to achieve adequate outcomes, is common. Research using electronic monitoring to assess compliance has shown that people take approximately 75% of doses as prescribed, irrespective of the condition being treated or its severity. Erratic compliance often leads to discontinuation of therapy, as treatment is perceived to be ineffective. Compliance decreases as frequency of dosing increases. Inadequate compliance and treatment persistence results in poor outcomes, despite the best efforts of the medical team. It is important to develop and implement a strategy to improve compliance. Simple steps that can be taken include helping patients to select "cues" to remind them to take their tablets, use of dose reminder boxes, and visual feedback of compliance data from electronic monitors.

Figure 1

Four week electronic dosing record for a patient prescribed a medication to be taken twice a day, showing erratic compliance on weekdays and neglect at the weekend.

Figure 2

Poor treatment persistence with antihypertensive medications. Data from Jones et al.⁶