Date of Award

1995

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Master of Physical Therapy (MPT)

Department

Physical Therapy

First Advisor

Thomas Mohr

Keywords

Patient Compliance

Abstract

Patient compliance is defined as the patients' following a request, wish, or demand that a health care provider has decided is necessary and beneficial for the improvement of the health of the patient. Oftentimes, though suggestions by providers are in the patient's best interest, patients will instead either disregard what has been told to them or actively go against the suggestions. Certainly, the patient is the manager of his/her own health care program, however, noncompliance is a very common problem. There are several reasons for noncompliance, including the psychological make-up of the patient, the patient's social environment, the nature of the treatment program, and the interaction between the patient and the therapist. Each of these areas will be looked at in detail and suggestions given to address these issues and increase the presence of compliance.

The purpose of this study is threefold, with the first purpose to show that the issue of patient noncompliance deserves attention as its prevalence is high. A second purpose is to discuss the factors involved in both the patient and health care professional which influence the patient towards noncompliance. A third purpose is to give suggestions towards improving patient compliance by addressing each of the problem areas with a patient education guideline. The good of this review will be to increase the awareness of the medical professional to patient noncompliance and to enhance various patient education techniques to lessen this incidence.

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