AlignMap

Re Compliance Vs Adherence Vs Concordance, …

I have another instance to offer that demonstrates the significance of re-naming the same phenomenon.

In the middle of his career, contract disputes led to Prince changing his stage name¹ from “Prince” to the unpronounceable symbol shown under the middle picture in the above graphic. The press circumvented the symbol by referring to “The Artist formerly known as Prince.” The performer has since returned to the hardly prosaic “Prince” appellation although sardonic sorts will still, on occasion, refer to him as “The artist formerly known as ‘the artist formerly known as Prince.’”

Note the transformations wrought by the shifts in names.


Footnotes

1. For the record, Prince’s given, non-stage name is Prince Rogers Nelson↩

I’ve run across another batch of articles in which the authors have flashed onto the epiphany that “adherence” is an altogether morally, ethically, and spiritually superior term to the malignant, inhumane, and generally repugnant “compliance” for designating the degree of a patient’s cooperation with a given treatment recommendation.¹

Given that I’ve been on a rant roll of late, it probably won’t be a surprise that I’m preparing a post on the Adherence Vs Compliance Vs Concordance Vs Whatever issue and how it at best misses and may well distract from the point. Heck, I may as well show the entire spoiler - I contend that the discussion itself implicitly sustains a fundamentally flawed concept of compliance.²

It will be some time before my full diatribe is completed and posted. I’m publishing this prelude now because of a quote from  a news story I recently read. The story is about the economic crisis rather than the patient noncompliance catastrophe, but I think the words are precisely applicable.

John McCain has a piece of advice for the House of Representatives when it reconvenes later this week for a second go around at a $700 billion financial package, call the bill a “rescue” rather than a “bailout.”

“The first thing I’d do is say, let’s not call it a bailout, let’s call it a rescue because it is a rescue. It’s a rescue of Main Street America,” McCain said in an interview on CNN’s “American Morning.

Well, thank goodness we now have the names straight. I’m sure that soon, this repair by renaming tactic that transformed an evil “bailout” to an all-American, virtuous “rescue” will somehow result in an improvement in my fiscal well being and an increased confidence about the future.

Any time now …

Footnotes

1. Has anyone else noticed these name game pieces seem to be published in packs? I am, in fact, now suggesting that a group of articles focused on competing names of phenomena is herewith to be called an appellation of names.↩
2. I hereby confess that 15-20 years ago I had the same revelation about the names and, had I been blogging at that time, would no doubt have self-righteously led the inquisition to re-educate those medical miscreants who dared use “compliance.” It is, trust me, a blessing to us all that I recovered before blogs evolved onto the scene.↩