Medication Nonadherence: Implications for patient health outcomes in pharmacy practice

ABSTRACT Objectives: The primary objective of this review is (1) to better understand the prevalence and impact of medication nonadherence, (2) to identify risk factors for medication nonadherence, (3) to understand the association between nonadherence and its implications on patient health outcomes in pharmacy practice, and (4) to study interventions designed to improve patient adherence to prescribed medications for medical conditions, considering its impact on both medication adherence and patient health outcomes.   Methods: Published journal articles were manually sorted. Additional references were obtained from citations within the retrieved articles. This review surveyed the findings of the identified articles with data extracted to presents various strategies and resources on medication nonadherence related to patients and healthcare providers. English languages were considered inclusion criteria in reviewing published articles related to medication nonadherence. This review also surveyed identified articles to determine both subjective and objective medication adherence measures. Key findings: The research in this field needs advances, including improved design of feasible long‐term interventions, objective adherence measures, and sufficient study power to detect improvements in patient health outcomes.   Conclusion: Current methods of improving medication adherence for chronic health problems are mostly complex and ineffective so full benefits of treatment cannot be realized. To date, monitoring of patient medication adherence and use of interventions to improve adherence are rare in routine clinical practice.