Cervantes at Stayin’ Alive blogs about public health & healthcare policy, areas of thought which may offer insight into patient compliance.

Theoretical Models of Health-Associated Behaviors

Two recent Stayin’ Alive posts, Why can’t you behave yourself? and
Sesquepedalianism in the service of truth are especially pertinent to adherence because they deal with theoretical models designed to explicate how and why individuals behave as they do regarding healthcare, including compliance and noncompliance with treatment.

My own contention has been and continues to be that such theories, however impressive on paper, are fundamentally flawed because they are implicitly or explicitly stipulate that individuals operate in an exclusively rational manner. In reality, if a purebred rational man ever existed, it was in a land far away and a time long ago. My more extended discussion of this topic can be found at Patient Behavior

Cervantes, who writes clearly, bluntly, and, sometimes, passionately, takes a congruent stance, albeit with less nuance, and offers an alternative behavioral hypothesis.

His feelings, for example, about the classical health behavior theories can be ascertained from this excerpt:

Subtle, eh?

Regardless, these two posts are enlightening and entertaining. Further, while only the occasional post on this blog addresses compliance directly, many public health policies have an impact on which healthcare elements are made available and which hoops through which one has to jump before accessing that care, which, in turn, has an impact on compliance.

• Running Patient Compliance Up The Flagpole
• Healthcare Compliance: Who Signs Up For What
• Compliance In Older Patients
• Dispensing Pills In Style
• Interruptions In Antiretroviral Therapy