Adherence to Prescribed Medications among Patients with Chronic Diseases

Multiple medications are prescribed to patients with chronic diseases making adherence an ongoing struggle for both patients and healthcare professionals. Hence, our aim was to evaluate the medication adherence level among patients with chronic diseases in Kelantan, Malaysia. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study from April 2017 until March 2019. Our inclusion criteria were adult patients with documented chronic diseases, treated in government hospitals and health clinics in Kelantan and on medications for at least one year. As for the intervention group, it consisted of patients who had at least 4 visits to the pharmacist-managed Diabetes Medication Therapy Adherence Clinic (DMTAC). Patients who were pregnant, breastfeeding, diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and those who were illiterate or unable to understand Bahasa Malaysia were excluded. The validated Malay version of Medication Compliance Questionnaire (MCQ) was used to measure medication adherence. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Results: We recruited a total of 275 patients (control, n=144; DMTAC, n=131). Most of them were Malay (n=268, 97.5%), female (n=173, 62.9%) with mean (SD) age of 55.6 (11.4) years old. Mean (SD) medication adherence score for our study population was 88.7 (9.9) w