Medication Compliance

“Tamang pag-inom ng gamot tungo sa maayos na kaisipan.”

OBJECTIVES:

One strategy to achieve better compliance is giving information to our psychiatric patients regarding their medications, benefits, its effects and side effects, through conducting health teaching on medication compliance. Through health teachings, there will be interaction with the patient, thus assessment of patient’s need may identify in regards to compliance problem.

Treating patients, involving them in planning their health care and encouraging them to take responsibility for their own health is very important in improving compliance (Matsui 2000). Compliance can be promoted by using easily learned communication skills that are part of patient-centered care.

We, nurses, believed that conducting health teaching on medication compliance will reduce our compliance problems such as patients hoarding their medicines, refusing to take their medication or throwing it away. Establishing their trust on us, nurses and other health care team will encourage them to comply with their medications, as prescribed, even when they are discharged or home conducted.

We aim to make our clients understand how and why medications can be used as part of the treatment of mental health problems and the benefits of medication compliance. Some of the benefits of good medication compliance are having better quality of living, reduction of relapses rate, and leads to a more productive lifestyle or maximum functioning on their daily living.

Medication Compliance

Compliance is defined as “the extent to which a person’s behavior coincides with medical or health advice.”

Factors believed to affect compliance:

 Patient knowledge
 Health beliefs and perceptions of possible benefits of treatment (self- efficacy)
 Prior compliance behavior
 Ability to integrate into daily life/ complexity of the drug regimen
 Social support (including practitioner relationships)


The RIM Technique:
 RECOGNIZE - using objective and subjective evidence, the nurse can determine if the patient may have an existing compliance problem.

 IDENTIFY - determine the causes of noncompliance with supportive probing questions, empathic responses and other universal statements.

 MANAGE – develop partnerships; nurse-patient relationship in order to gain patient’s trust.


Benefits of Medication Compliance:
• Patients benefit from a better quality of life.
• It improves therapeutic outcomes, allowing the patient to experience the intended effects of a prescribed medication.
• Improved health state leads to a more productive lifestyle, and businesses benefit from healthy individual.
• Improved adherence can reduce the number of hospital admissions, emergency room visits, and sick days.

Antipsychotic Medications:
Medications for mental illnesses were first introduced in the early 1950s with the antipsychotic chlorpromazine. Other medications have followed. These medications have changed the lives of people with these disorders for the better.
Psychotherapeutic medications also may make other kinds of treatment more effective. Someone who is too depressed to talk, for instance, may have difficulty communicating during psychotherapy or counseling, but the right medication may improve symptoms so the person can respond. For many patients, a combination of psychotherapy and medication can be an effective method of treatment.
Another benefit of these medications is an increased understanding of the causes of mental illness. Scientists have learned much more about the workings of the brain as a result of their investigations into how psychotherapeutic medications relieve the symptoms of disorders such as psychosis, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic disorder.

Things to consider:

Antipsychotic medications reduce the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, usually allowing a person to function more effectively and appropriately. They are divided into four large categories—antipsychotic, antimanic, antidepressant, and antianxiety medications.

Psychotherapeutic medications do not cure mental illness, but in many cases, they can help a person function despite some continuing mental pain and difficulty coping with problems.

Patients and families sometimes become worried about the antipsychotic medications used to treat schizophrenia. In addition to concern about side effects, they may worry that such drugs could lead to addiction. However, antipsychotic medications do not produce a "high" or addictive behavior in people who take them.

Clozapine also has a risk of inducing agranulocytosis, a potentially dangerous reduction in the number of white blood cells in the body. Because of this risk, patients prescribed clozapine have regular blood checks or monthly complete blood count to catch the condition early if it does occur, so the patient is in no danger.

One of the more serious side effects is tardive dyskinesia, in which the patient may show repetitive, involuntary, purposeless movements often of the lips, face, legs, or torso. It is believed that there is a greater risk of developing tardive dyskinesia with the older, typical antipsychotic drugs, although the newer antipsychotics are now also known to cause this disorder. So with proper assessment done by the doctors and nurses, proper medications were prescribed to a certain client. Biperidin Hydrochloride is usually ordered by the doctor to fight the side effect or the extrapyramidal side effects.