Patients make balanced decisions whether to take drugs

Patients balance reservations about drugs generally against positive experiences with doctors, perceived benefits of medication, or a consideration of pragmatic issues. Patients receiving treatment for chronic conditions often hold reservations about their drugs and make active decisions about continuing to use them. Benson and Britten (p 873) interviewed patients taking antihypertensive drugs and developed a taxonomy of patients' reservations about drugs and their reasons for taking them. Patients' ideas may derive from considerations unrelated to drugs' pharmacological properties. Different patients may balance similar perceptions differently, and a single patient may balance multiple reservations against different reasons to take a drug. Taking patients' views into account when reviewing or initiating hypertensive treatment may be helped by directly asking about their reservations, their reasons for taking drugs, and the balance between them.

(Credit: REX)

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Relevant Article

Patients' decisions about whether or not to take antihypertensive drugs: qualitative study

John Benson and Nicky Britten
BMJ 2002 325: 873. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]