Patient Compliance with Medications: Issues and Opportunities

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 friendsor 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.