Factors Affecting Therapeutic Compliance, Essay Example

While medical professionals regularly have to cope with the fact that their patients can be non-adherent, it is important to consider the ethical implications of this problem. It is the responsibility of the medical professional to ensure that their patients have access to excellent care, but this requirement becomes challenging when the patient is either unwilling or unable to contribute to this goal (Nichols-English & Poirier, 2000). One of the most problematic cases of patient non-adherence occurs when individuals are claiming that they are taking their prescribed medications, when they are not in reality. It is necessary for the health care professional to detect this lie and to address it accordingly.

In the obstetrics setting, ensuring that patients take their medication is rarely a problem, although making sure that patients take their recommended vitamins is challenging. Many of these individuals are not non-compliant on purpose, but may simply forget that this is a part of their health regiment due to their busy schedules. As a consequence, it is the responsibility of the health care professional to ensure that these patients are reminded about the need to take the vitamins. When these simple reminders are not enough, it is beneficial to provide vitamins and medications to these individuals when they are inpatients and to personally supervise their consumption of these materials (Jin et al., 2008). Unfortunately, not much can be done about this non-compliance when patients are not in the hospital, but health care professionals can adhere to their ethical responsibilities when these individuals are within their proximity.

Ultimately, it is the ethical duty of health care professionals to ensure that client non-adherence is addressed to the best of their ability. While this could range from reminding patients to take their medications in vitamins to actively observing this process, this is an important component of the ethical requirements that medical professionals are expected to follow.

References

Jin J, Sklar GE, Oh VMS, Chuen S. (2008). Factors affecting therapeutic compliance: A review from the patient’s perspective. Ther Clin Risk Manag., 4(1): 269–286.

Nichols-English G, Poirier S. (2000). Optimizing Adherence to Pharmaceutical Care Plans. J Am Pharm Assoc., 40(4).