I’ve published a second post, Patient Compliance – So Wrong For So Long, at the eyeforpharma.com site.
For ongoing AlignMap readers, this will be a new perspective on an old theme – the failure of the concept of patient compliance to provide reliable or valid information about a patient’s response to treatment recommendations.
Specifically, I compare the meager accomplishments in treatment adherence to the civilization-changing benefits produced in the field of epidemiology.
I also offer examples in which minor situational variations may – or may not – change ones assessment whether a given patient is compliant or noncompliant. The implicit question, of course, is how useful can the concept of compliance itself be if the significance of a patient being identified as compliant or noncompliant is nebulous.
About That Fish, The Barrel, And The Smoking Guns
Yeah, I know it seems like overkill, and it is, I admit, a tad too easy to be enjoyable as a sport, but, after all, the current ideas about patient compliance have so far been able to dodge bullets for decades and still survive.
More to the point, this elaboration of the problems with patient compliance is necessary as explanation of and motivation for the changes essential for creating a functional alternative to the current thinking.
In the meantime, take a look at Patient Compliance – So Wrong For So Long if for no other reason than garnering inspiration from epidemiology’s successes and imagine what could be accomplished if we could make similar advances in patient compliance.