Abstract

ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF PATIENT MEDICATION ADHERENCE IN GENERAL MEDICAL WARD IN THE TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL

Dr. A. Ravishankar*, Sujit Kumar Sah and Kotha Ashok Guptha

ABSTRACT

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines adherence as: „„the extent to which a person‟s behavior-taking medication, following a diet, and/or executing lifestyle changes, corresponds with agreed recommendations from a health care provider. Medication adherence is a growing concern to clinicians, healthcare systems, and other stakeholders (e.g. payers) because of mounting evidence that non-adherence is prevalent and associated with adverse outcomes and higher costs of care. Materials and Methods: A hospital based prospective, observational study were conducted in the General Medicine Department and the study was conducted for a period of six months. Total of 280 patients were selected and enrolled in our study according to Inclusion and Exclusion criteria. We used well designed Morisky 8 scale questionnaire form, patient data collection form, patient counseling form and feedback form were used to collect all required data from study subject to achieve goals of our study. Results and Discussion: A total of 280 patients were included as study subject. According to the our study, among major four risk factors majority of the patients were having age risk factor. The highly adherent behavior of patients shown in our study was 167(59.65%). In our study we did interventional study by providing patient counseling to the patient with non-adherence during study period. After receiving patient counseling by study subjects low adherence reduced from 42(15%) to 7(21%) and high adherence increased from 167 (59.64%) to 248(88.57%).

Keywords: Medication Adherence, Non-medication adherence, Patient Counseling.