Nearly a third of people on medication do not take it as prescribed and only 50% of patients adhere to their doctor’s advice.
The reasons for such behaviour could be many: lack of understanding, lack of access to healthcare and social support, financial wherewithal and inability to administer the medicines.
Often doctors are unable to spend sufficient time with their patients, giving at best three to four minutes per patient. As a result they are unable to ask questions that the patients anticipate.
This has a cascading effect on the patients, said John Weinman, Professor of Psychology as applied to Medicines in the School of Cancer Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry,Psychology and Neuroscience in King’s College London.
Instead of asking if the patient is taking medications regularly, a doctor could ask how many days in a fortnight the patient skipped medication. The doctor could qualify the statement by empathising with the patient, coaxing better adherence, said Sheri D. Pruitt, a clinical psychologist in northern California. She is also former director, Behavioural Science Integration, Kaiser Permanente.
Dr. Weinman felt as doctors could rope in healthcare providers, including nurses and pharmacists, to direct patients to upload the app. By communicating with the patients constantly, the levels of adherence could be improved, he felt.
The specialists were discussing ways to enthuse patients to adhere to medications so that they would take better care of themselves and have a better quality of life, at a webinar to promote Abbott’s new app that people could download on their mobile to monitor their health.
