Assessment of Medication Adherence and Common Non-Adherence: A Routinely Overlooked Hurdle

Medication adherence has always been an integral aspect to achieve any healthcare benefit of pharmacological treatment. Although health care has evolved remarkably, the need for conducting studies on medication adherence has its own noteworthiness, for instance, in clinical settings, the incapability to accurately identify medication non-adherence can lead to unwarranted intensification of the treatment. Hence assessment of medication adherence and common non-adherence plays a pivotal role in improving adherence in the future by promoting employment of techniques that may be beneficial in overcoming and preventing the global issue of non-adherence. The literature search was done using the keywords as mentioned below in EBSCO; further on the snowball method was employed. There are two types of measuring medication adherence: direct and indirect. Direct measurement for quantification is utilitarian in establishing a YES/NO result rather than elaborating upon the causes of non-adherence. Indirect measurements are the ones which cannot be quantified accurately. There are numerous types of direct and indirect measurements. Non-adherence can be classified as direct, indirect, intentional and nonintentional. Various factors contribute towards non-adherence such as patient knowledge, doctor-patient relationship and unintentional drivers. Approaches to overcome non-adherence can be from healthcare professionals, patients, pharmaceutical companies or system-based. Socio-economic factors, system, therapy, patient, condition-related factors constitute barriers of medication adherence.