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Patients with such chronic conditions as asthma and heart disease rapidly stop taking their medicines as prescribed, new research reveals.

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, June 1, 2004

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Many patients prescribed a medicine for a long term condition, such as asthma or heart disease, rapidly stop taking their medicines as prescribed, reveals research in Quality and Safety in Health Care.

The patients were surveyed by questionnaire and by telephone, 10 days and a month after starting a new long term treatment.

About 33% of patients were not taking the new medicines as prescribed10 days after diagnosis, and 25% were likewise noncompliant one month later. This included not taking the right dose, and/or at the right time, and/or at the right frequency. Half of this non-compliance was deliberate at both time points.

About 65% of those still taking their medicines after 10 days said they had experienced a problem with it. And almost the same percentage expressed a "substantial and sustained need" for further information. By four weeks, this need for more education continued in half of those surveyed.

Current prescribing and dispensing processes could be much more effective, the authors venture. Although patients cannot foresee what problems they will have until they start taking their drugs, the outcomes suggest that patients require more education and support patients about their treatment during the early phase of a long-term condition.

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