Noncompliance in Patients essays

Noncompliance in Patients essays The advances in medical science now allow people to live longer than ever before. With the treatments and medications available people who used to only live a few months with chronic illness are now living for years and within those years having active lives. It is an amazing breakthrough and one that promises to keep moving forward however, with those advances come some issues. One of the things that health professionals are dealing with is the problem with non compliant patients with regard to taking medications as directed. Non compliant patients are that way for many reasons. Sometimes they are non compliant because they start to feel a little better and believe they no longer need the medication. This can be a common issue among the mentally ill and is a significant issue with diagnosed schizophrenics. Other times patients may be non compliant because the medications they are supposed to take have side effects that they do not want to deal with. Whether the medication causes ext reme fatigue, nausea, dizziness or other physical manifestations many patients believe the side effects are not worth the potential benefits of the medication and stop taking the medication. In other instances noncompliance may come from a misguided decision by the patient to try and hasten their own death so they will not be a burden on their family and in still other cases noncompliance may just be forgetfulness or lack of maturity and responsibility on the part of the patient. Whatever reason there is for a patients noncompliance it is important for the health care professionals to work with the patient and if needed intervene so that the medication will be properly administered to the patient. This is not only for the safety and well being of the patient but in cases such as Tuberculosis it also becomes a public safety factor. In looking at the issue of non compliant patients one can examine the drug AdvancePCS which is a drug commonly prescri...