Too many Americans can’t afford to and simply do not–take their medicines as prescribed. That estimate is based on information from the (American!) Centers for Disease Control). I have had patients come into my office who take their medications –in both cases, for life-threatening infectious diseases — only every other day, simply because that is all they can afford. I explained to each one individually the idea of the half-life of a drug. They only stay in your body for a certain length of time, then they leave your body in waste products. That is why taking a drug every other day is not really effective. They both gave me almost exactly the same response — It was all they could afford, and it was probably better than nothing. Read more on Big Pharma Is Capitalism Out Of Control…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, Education, Government, Hepatitis C, medicine, News, politics, prescription drugs, Psychiatrists, Psychotherapy by on May 29th, 2017. Comment. 
“Concordance.” That means doctor and patient wanting the same thing. In psychiatry we call it a “therapeutic alliance.” We work for it — assuming we have the time. But if the time is not there, on some level we all know that nothing will happen.
Leave it to the pharmacists to at least touch on a reason for “lack of concordance” that nobody seems to discuss. “With increasing numbers of medications shown to do more good than harm when taken as prescribed, low compliance is a major problem in health care,” reads an unpretentious sentence in the abstract.
And people wonder why there is no “trust” between patient and doctor. Read more on Trusting Your Doctor…