Medical Non-Adherence
A Silent Killer
WHAT IS MEDICAL NON-ADHERENCE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Medical adherence is the idea that a patient will adhere to their prescribed treatment and medication. Although the idea is simple, many patients fail to adhere to their medication- a concept known as medical non - adherence. Medical non-adherence is the source of millions of hospitalizations per year, which in turn sky rockets health care costs in the U.S. alone. It is a silent killer for there are little to no known solutions to the problem.
Medical non-adherence occurs in two types of people: the intentionally non-adherent and the unintentionally non-adherent. For the sake of this capstone, I will only be focusing on those who are unintentionally non-adherent.
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Medical non-adherence may be killing millions more, but go unreported, for this problem is widely unacknowledged. Bringing awareness to this silent killer as well as proposing a solution may help save millions of lives, or, at the least, bring more awareness to the topic.