Ken Farbstein at Patient Safety Blog – Telling Our Stories has posted a special case of noncompliance at He Had A Secret Plan: A Patient Compliance Story.1
The pertinent issues are the patient’s mistaken belief that his successful program of exercise and dieting obviated his need for medications prescribed to treat his heart condition and, more significantly, the patient’s decision not to inform his physician that he had unilaterally begun the rigorous diet and exercise program and terminated his drug regimen.
The message is clear: failing to communicate changes in a treatment program to ones clinician places one at unnecessarily high risk for little discernible benefit.
This story is a poignant companion piece to How To (Correctly) Not Take Medications As Prescribed, a post on the AlignMap blog suggesting that patients who discontinue their medications but inform their physicians of this change are, by my pragmatic conceptualization of the principle, “in compliance.”
Footnotes
- Published April 27, 2007↩