Adherence to Medical Advice

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Adherence to Medical Advice

a) Adherence to medical advice depends on various factors.

Psychologists have carried out research and experiments to find the

factors into compliance. Kent and Dalgleish (1996) had claimed that

perceived seriousness of illness of the mother was more important than

that of the doctors, this meant that mothers who felt their children

were more susceptible to illness were more likely to adhere to a

medical regime set out by the doctor, and attend the appointments made

than those mothers who had a different conviction. The study of Turk

and Meinchenbaum (1991) supports the idea that patients are less

likely to adhere due to the potential side effects of their treatment.

Adherence is therefore likely to decrease if the patient feels that

the treatment is worse than the illness itself. Turk and Meinchenbaum

also suggest that patients are also less likely to adhere if they do

not fully understand the instructions given to them by the doctor or a

particular medication that has been prescribed doesn’t work. The

Health Belief Model designed by Hochbaum (1958) was used to help

researchers investigate the psychology behind adherence to medical

advice in today’s society. This model was used to explain the failure

of people to participate in preventive health campaigns. The four

components that make up this model includes the perceive threat of

illness, the benefits and barriers, the action that should be taken

and the sociodemograhic variables. Research into adherence highlights

the point that different groups of patients require different

approaches. Watt et al (2003) showed that children were more li...

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...Third World countries, have different

level of food consumption i.e the daily calorie intake is much below

that of America or any other western country.

BPS ethical guidelines should be cohered with when conducting research

into adherence. Yung ensured that all participants with non-insulin

dependant diabetes mellitus gave informed consent; therefore this

study did meet the BPS guidelines in informing participants of the

objectives of the research. Watt et al didn’t gain consent from the

children themselves, those that would be using the ‘Funhaler ’ due to

the reason that they were under 16 years of age, and thus consent was

gained from their parents.

Sethi et al has face validaty as the researchers asked the patients

how many doeses of medication they had missed over the previous three

days and their response

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