Improving adherence to prescribed drugs

doi:10.1136/bmj.b3282

Published 20 August 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3282
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3282

Editorials

Improving adherence to prescribed drugs

Techniques used to change behaviour should be considered

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Non-adherence to prescribed medicines can cause treatment failure,mortality, and increase healthcare costs.¹ ² Methods of improvingadherence are only marginally effective,³ so several challengesremain.

Recently the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence(NICE) published a clinical guideline for involving patientsin decisions about prescribed drugs and increasing adherence.⁴The guideline recommends that prescribers accept the patient’sright to decide not to take a drug, even when they do not agreewith the decision, "as long as the patient has capacity to makean informed decision and has been provided with the informationneeded to make such decision." However, it fails to provideguidance for dealing with circumstances in which refusal toaccept medication places the patient at an unacceptable riskof harm. Despite this shortfall, the guideline outlines usefulstrategies that may improve adherence to drug treatment.

The guideline promotes active yet sensitive provision of informationand discussion. . . . [Full text of this article]

Abilio C de Almeida Neto, associate professor, Parisa Aslani, senior lecturer, Timothy F Chen, senior lecturer

¹ Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

abilio@pharm.usyd.edu.au

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