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Margi Gajjar
Dharmendrasingh Rajput
This review article outlines how community pharmacists can play an important role in medication adherence. WHO defines medication adherence as “the degree to which a person’s behavior corresponds to the agreed recomme ndations for the healthcare provider.” Though medication adherence commonly refers to drug compliance, in broader sense it includes all treatment instructions such as self -care, medical device use, and exercise and therapy sessions. Missing a single dose t o medication leads to progression of disease, and this is referred as non - adherence. Non -adherence occurs due to both patients as well as providers barriers. Patient barrier includes cost, lack of understanding about the medicine regimen, side effects scar es and many more and provider barrier like lack of awareness among clinicians about basic adherence management principles, or patient -physician miscommunication may be the reason. The basic requirement for adherence is trust towards healthcare professional s by patients. And this trust is gained by pharmacist by proper counselling for the disease as well as its medication. Adherence tools like pill cards, pill boxes and mobile medications apps are used which help the patient to adhere to treatment regimen. P harmacist can play an important role to maintain the patient medication adherence. He/she can do all the possible efforts to make the patient comfortable. But the only required thing is, the patient must open up with the pharmacist and share all the problems regarding the medication, adverse effects or disease conditions to overcome the problems.
Keywords: Adherence, healthcare provider, drug compliance, counselling, pill boxes, mobile medication apps