Factors affecting Medical Care: Compliance and Adherence

There are a number of factors that contributed to therapeutic non-compliance. These

factors could be categorized to patient-centered factors, theraphy related factors,
social and economic factors, healthcare system factors, and disease factors. For some
of these factors, the impact on compliance was not unequivocal, but for other factors,
the impact was inconsistent and contradictory.

Social Economic Factors: People who have social support from family, friends, or
caregivers to assist with medication regimens have better adherence to treatment.
Unstable living environments, limited access to health care, lack of financial
resources, cost of medication, and burdensome work schedules have all been
associated with decresed adherence rates.

Condition-related Factors: Long term drugs administration for many chronic illnesses
and adherence to such treatment regimens often declines significantly over time. This
often happens when patiend have few or no symptoms and the absence of them is a
barrier for people to take their medication. It is important for the patient to understand
the illness and what will happen if it is not treated.

Therapy-related Factors: The complexity of the medication regimen, which includes

the number of medications and number of daily doses required; duration of therapy;
therapies that are inconvenient or interfere with a person’s lifestyle and side effects
have been associated with decreases adherence.

Factors affecting organ transplantation

Qualitative studies that seemingly intractable factors, such as religion and culture, are
often tied in with more complex issues such as a distrust of the medical system,
misunderstandings about religious stances and ignorance about the donation process.
Intervention that could be considered includes culturally appropriate strategies to
engage minority groups, especially through religious or cultural leaders, and more
comprehensively available information about the donation process and its positive
outcomes.

Factors regarding Chronic diseases: Treatment Regimen

Lack of knowledge: the older people’s chronic diseases knowledge should be
improved and health education programs should target older people with lower
educational level. Having no health insurance, having no family history of chronic
diseases, participating in no societies, and less frequently gathering with
friends/relatives. Also, lower lever medical facilities should improve their skills of
health education.