Entries Tagged as 'Family-Peer Support'
September 12th, 2008 · Comments Off
Friends Don't Let Friends Go To The Doctor Alone
I hadn’t planned to post today, but after I came across Bring Friend To The Hospital, a 9 Sept 2008 Chicago Tribune article by Susan Kutchin Pallant, I found it so resonant with my own experience that I felt compelled to point others to it. In addition, the linkage to patient compliance is apparent.
The following excerpts indicate the focus of the piece, but the entire article is worth reading:
A study exploring the efficacy of companions and the elderly in medical settings, published this summer in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that companions are actively engaged in the care process and add to patients’ satisfaction with their care. A growing number of companies offer professional patient advocacy services that are designed to assist patients with everything from deciphering a bill to ensuring that a patient is properly taking a prescribed medication.
The elderly aren’t the only ones who might benefit from a partner in health care. Whether a patient hires a professional advocate or relies on a relative or friend to help navigate our complex medical arena, the evidence that supports having a partner is building.
Patients can get anxious, making it difficult to understand and remember medical details. In one study, Roy C. Kessels, professor of neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology at Radboud University in the Netherlands, found that patients immediately forget 40 percent to 80 percent of medical information provided by health-care practitioners.”Close relatives aren’t always the optimal choice, but support of any kind can be valuable,” said Wilkos-Prostran.
… A study published this year in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons showed that patients with a large support network of family and friends report feeling less pain and anxiety before surgery. Wilkos-Prostran added, “Hospitalized patients who have visitors also recover much faster than those who are left alone.”
The complete article is online at Bring Friend To The Hospital
Tags: Family-Peer Support · Lay Media
April 18th, 2007 · Comments Off
Primary Source: Patterns, correlates, and barriers to medication adherence among persons prescribed new treatments for HIV disease. Catz, Sheryl L.; Kelly, Jeffrey A.; Bogart, Laura M.; Benotsch, Eric G.; McAuliffe, Timothy L. Health Psychology. 19(2), Mar 2000, 124-133.
Secondary Source: Social Support and Confidence Predict AIDS Patient’s Adherence to Complex Medication Regimens Healthlink 2000-03-29.
The Study
Logistics
Excerpted from abstract:
Sixty-three men and 9 women on highly active antiretroviral therapy completed measures of medication adherence, psychological characteristics, and barriers to adherence. HIV viral load, a health outcome measure of virus amount present in blood, was also obtained. The sample was 36% African American and 56% Caucasian, with 35% reporting disability. Nearly one third of patients had missed medication doses in the past 5 days, and 18% had missed doses weekly over the past 3 months. Frequency of missed doses was strongly related to detectable HIV viral loads
Results
Of all the factors examined only patients’ confidence and their perceptions of social support independently predicted adherence. (Overall, nonadherent patients were also more likely to be depressed and have more side-effects than adherent patients, but these did not independently predict compliance/noncompliance.)
Implications
According to lead author Sheryl L. Catz, PhD, Our findings suggest that patients with limited emotional support should receive mental health and support services not only to improve psychological functioning but also, potentially, to enhance treatment adherence. Interventions that enhance a persons’ perceived confidence in adhering to treatment regimens also seem particularly important, especially at the time when the therapy is initiated.
Commentary
Evidence that social support and self-confidence have a positive impact on adherence is heartening.
My only cautionary note has to do with the implications drawn. The finding that patients who are more self-confident and feel themselves more supported by peers and family are more adherent to treatment does not necessarily mean that interventions designed to imbue less confident and more isolated patients with these traits will render those individuals more adherent, even if the interventions are successful. Learned self-confidence may or may not be equivalent to “naturally occurring” self-confidence. As usual, more research is necessary.
Footnotes
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Tags: Family-Peer Support
