by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

CAROLYN’S WARNING:  this article contains a C-word that drives many chronically ill patients stark raving bonkers. Continue reading only if you can stomach the word “COMPLIANT”

Dr. Aaron E. Carroll wrote a compelling essay in the New York Times recently. (By the way, I’ve often wondered why so many people – mostly men, I’ve observed – insist on formally using a middle initial? Is it to differentiate them from all of the other Dr. Aaron Carrolls out there?)*

Dr. Aaron E. Carroll’s subject has intrigued me ever since 2008 when I was told in the CCU that, from now on, I needed to take this fistful of new cardiac meds – many of them every day for the rest of my natural life.

Pesky patients who, for whatever reason, do not follow doctors’ orders represent a perennial frustration in medicine. Sometimes the consequences of not being “compliant” (or “adherent”, the slightly less patronizing term) are brutal, so this decision not to can be deadly serious, accounting for two-thirds of medication-related hospital admissions. And more to the point, it begs the question of how to convince people to do what the doctor says they must (or, as some people – but not me – like to call it: “how to make non-compliant patients compliant”). Continue reading “When “nudging” doesn’t work to change patient behaviour” →