Medical Adherence

Many readers and customers of our pharmaceutical services might be unaware of what medical adherence is and how it affects them and society in general.

For a rough overview, lack of medication adherence results into increased mortality and morbidity, higher admissions into hospitals and skyrocketing healthcare costs. In essence, people not sticking to their doctor’s advice and prescription when it comes to medication has the above and various other negative effects, which we will touch upon below. For help and support into taking the right medication the correct way, you can call us or reach out through email.

What is Medication Adherence?

Different organisations define medical adherence in a different fashion, including the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration; the resume of the term is highlighted below:

Medical Adherence refers to receiving your medication appropriately, as it was advised in the doctor’s prescription. As such, filling your prescription, remembering to take your meds on time and following the directions are all parts of this process.

Challenges & Shortcomings

Although medical non-adherence often involves blaming the recipient of the medication, there are several factors that result to it:

In many instances, patients don’t have enough money to pay for their meds, which results in cases that patients refill their prescription inconsistently or not at all.

Lack of health literacy is another crucial element, as patients do not understand the importance of taking their medication correctly and why it is important.

Another aspect that is often linked to the above are side-effects. When a patient experiences negative effects as a result of taking a medication, they will often stop taking without even informing their doctor or looking for a less painful alternative.

Lastly, with some people taking multiple medications daily, managing their prescriptions and adhering to the doctor’s advise is indeed challenging.

Paving the Way to Adherence from Medical Non-Adherence

The significance of adhering to the medical prescriptions of your doctor should be pretty obvious, although the way to resolve this issue might not be.

• At an industry level: Firstly, the industry as a whole should reach out to general practitioners and doctors to motivate them to understand why people fail to adhere to their medical prescriptions
• At a personal level: Then, doctors and practitioners should also inform their patients about the medicines that they are taking. If they understand in-depth the implication of not adhering to their medication, they are more likely to stick to it. Details into side-effects and ensuring that the prescription is clear is also a prerequisite
• From the patient side: You, as the patient, have also an important role in battling medication non-adherence. Anything that is unclear you should reach out to your pharmacist or doctor, instead of acting on your own

Lastly, we, as the middle-way between patients and doctors are doing the best to play our part into medication adherence. By providing you with clear guidelines and direct actionable points on how to actualize your prescription, we are helping bridge the gap. Reach out for select tools on how to manage your prescriptions and details on how to adhere to your medication.