Medication Adherence in Renal Patients

Background: Medication adherence is defined as extent of patients taking medications as prescribed by doctors. It is the major factor that determines the therapeutic outcomes in the patient. Non adherence is quite common problem in most of the patients which is dangerous and can increase treatment expenses.

Aims: The study was conducted to evaluate and identify various reasons leading to non-adherence which can result in unpleasant consequences in the renal patients.

Materials and Methods: The study was a prospective observational study that was performed through a questionnaire for 6 months. The data collected includes renal patient’s demographic details, past history, complaints, medications and interviewed them regarding their medications use by using morisky adherence questionnaire.

Results: The study was performed on 300 renal patients in the nephrology department. From this data around 31(10%) of the patients were completely adherent and 269(90%) of the patients were non-adherent to the medications. 66(24%) were non-adherent due to forgetfulness about medications, 49(18.2%) were non-adherent because of very frequent changes made in the drug regimen, 63(23.4%) of the patients were non-adherent because of expensive medicines.

Conclusion: In our study, we observed that most of the people are unaware of their own medical condition and about their medications use. We assessed that lack of knowledge on renal complications and purpose of medication adherence will cause the non-medication adherence in the renal patients. So, the health care professionals must educate the patients regarding their severity of their health condition, usage and importance of their prescribed medications and advantages of hemodialysis in CKD patients, dietary restrictions to improve their quality of life and to reduce mortality rate. Non adherence can be also a result of low economic status.