Patient’s characteristics and adherence

Patient's Characteristics and Adherence:

By the 1990’s because of a growing awareness of the importance of this problem, serious research attention began to be devoted to the subject of “non compliance with medical orders”.

 

Patients do not routinely admit that they do not know a word or don’t understand a question. When a doctor asks, “Have you any questions? ”and gets a “no questions” response, he may mistakenly assume that the patient understands. But absence of questions may also signify that people do not understand enough to know what questions to ask. Absence of questions may also indicate simple rejection of advice that seems unacceptable because it flies in the face of the patients firm beliefs, or because it is only marginally comprehended, or simply seems overwhelming.

 

Why People See A Doctor

People see a doctor because they feel they need help. The underlying causes of the visit may be emotional, social, or physical and most often they are combination of these. People leave the doctors or reject medical advice most often because they feel the doctor does not take the trouble to listen to them and therefore does not understand them or the emotional and social stresses that may be prompting the search for help, It does not necessarily take extra time to notice what a patient believes about his illness, nor to determine I what he understands about the advice he gives.

 

A patient also wants to know the diagnosis, the tests that are per-formed on him, the results of the tests and what treatment he is on. And it is the duty of the doctor to educate the patients and take them into confidence.