E-DRUG: The terms compliance and patient
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I believe the word "compliance" has been succeeded by the word
"concordance", which which refers to an agreement between the patient
and the physician.
There is a website on concordance: http://www.concordance.org/
In Norway we put a pharmacy label on the patients'drug packs, with the name
of the patient, what the purpose of the medicine is (against pneumonia,
against asthma etc), individual dosage instructions, date of dispensing,
and the name of the doctor ond the pharmacy.
If the doctor has not given a specific dosage instruction on the
prescription (which he/she always should do) we used to write "Use
as directed by the physician" on the pharmacy label. At least ten years
ago, this standard phrase was changed to "Use as agreed with the
physician".
Even many patients still take their medicine "as directed by the
physician", I think it is important to recognize the patient's
right to decide about his/her own situation.
I don't like the idea of changing the word patient. There should be a
health reason for using medicines. Using the word consumer
would camouflage this. Client, customer and user are all terms that can be
used in some connections, but generally, I prefer to call
medicine users for patients.
For users of contraceptive pills the word patient may not be the best. On
the other hand, if they do not take their pills, they may get pregnant. And
at birth in hospital, even if all is wery well, they are called patients.
Stein Lyftingsmo
Hospital Pharmacy of Elverum, Norway
sjappe@online.no
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