Health Psychology- (B) Patient Practioner Relationship

Measuring Adherence To Medical Advice

Cluss and Epstein (1985) suggest the following methods to measure Adherence to medical advice:

1. Self report: Asking patients how adherent they have been to their prescribed health regime.
2. Therapeutic Outcome: Is the patient getting better? It can be attributed to adherence to regime  on his/her part.
3. Health worker estimates: Asking doctor about their estimates on their patients' adherence.
4. Pill and bottle counts: Checking the patients medicine cabinets and medicine bottles for how frequently they have been used.
5. Mechanical methods: Devices to measure how much medicine has been removed from bottles.
6. Biochemical tests: Blood tests or urine tests may reveal how adherent the patient has been to their health regimen.

Study: Chung and Naya (2000) Measuring adherence using track caps:

They performed their study on patients from London. To measure adherence track caps were used. The track cap recorded the time and date of the usage of the bottle. In this case, the patients had to take their medicines twice. Adherence rates were found to be high among the patients.