Patient adherence to medical treatment: a review of reviews.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Patients' non-adherence to medical treatment remains a persistent problem. Many interventions to improve patient adherence are unsuccessful and sound theoretical foundations are lacking. Innovations in theory and practice are badly needed. A new and promising way could be to review the existing reviews of adherence to interventions and identify the underlying theories for effective interventions. That is the aim of our study.

Methods

The study is a review of 38 systematic reviews of the effectiveness of adherence interventions published between 1990 and 2005. Electronic literature searches were conducted in Medline, Psychinfo, Embase and the Cochrane Library. Explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. The scope of the study is patient adherence to med

SUBMITTER: van Dulmen S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1955829 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature