Compliance with treatment: related-issues and insights for pharmacist intervention

Abstract

Low patient compliance with pharmacotherapy remains one of the greatest challenges for success of treatments, especially in chronic diseases, since it can negatively influence treatment effectiveness and patient quality of life, increase health expenses and decrease productivity of the patient. Compliance is an important but complex issue in clinical practice. Its complexity begins with the difficulty in adopting terminology that can express its exact meaning. Moreover, many methods to evaluate compliance have been established but no consensus exists on which method should be considered the gold standard. Additionally, socioeconomic, disease and therapy-related factors, healthcare team and system related-factors and patient-related factors can simultaneously influence compliance levels. In this highly complex scenario, pharmacist interventions have been identified as an effective strategy to enhance patient compliance with treatment. The objectives of this paper were: (1) to provide useful information for pharmacists about issues related to compliance such as terminology and definitions; methods for measuring compliance and persistence; influencing factors and the impact of low compliance; and (2) to offer insight into how these healthcare professionals can effectively contribute toward improved compliance levels.