First of a two-part Series by Jon Caswell

Many stroke survivors are patients for the rest of their lives. They remain under a doctor’s care, taking medicine and living with dietary, exercise and stress management prescriptions. Living this way is called “compliance” or “adherence.” It means “doing what your doctors tell you to do.”

Not following the doctor’s guidance is a huge, costly and growing problem in healthcare. A recent study by the World Health Organization found that half of all prescriptions written in developed countries like the United States were not taken as prescribed.

Of the 3 billion prescriptions written in the U.S. last year, 1.5 billion were either not filled or were used incorrectly. And that count doesn’t include how many lifestyle prescriptions, like getting regular exercise, were poorly implemented or simply ignored.

At first glance, compliance seems to be a patient problem. If patients would just do what they’re told, everything would be fine. The reality is much more complex, and when we began investigating why noncompliance is so widespread, we found that there are many barriers. While some are external barriers thrown up by the medical or insurance systems, many barriers are internal or psychological. In Part One of our two-part series on medication adherence, we look at the psychological challenges survivors face in following doctors’ orders. If you aren’t following doctors’ orders (and that’s about half of you), use this list to diagnose where the problem starts. 

Read More... Internal Barriers