Don't call it compliance
September 1, 2010 -- As nurses, how do we perceive the work we do? This semester, my clinical rotation is in mental health ("psych") nursing. One of the terms of art is patient compliance -- are they taking all their pills? But we don't call it that any more. Now the preferred term is, in the spirit of patient empowerment, adherence. In other words, we prefer to think they take their pills by choice. In her heart of hearts, though, the psych nurse will admit misgivings about mental health care being little more than polypharmacy. Oh yes, and we don't call them patients anymore, either. Now they're clients. Perception is everything. |
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Dan Keller's Nursing, Health Policy & Healthcare Technology Blog
Nursing Informatics · Clinical Perspectives · Healthcare Systems
"The United States alone [among wealthy countries] treats health care as a commodity to be distributed according to the ability to pay rather than a social service to be distributed according to medical need." — JAMA (2003), 290, 798