Patient non-adherence: an interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Purpose
While Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) has been employed in health psychology research, it has so far not been applied to seek deeper insights into the patients’ experiences about treatment. This paper addresses this gap by employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to understand patient non-adherence.

Design/methodology/approach
Eighteen patients with chronic conditions seeking health care services in Goa and Karnataka, India, were selected by employing snowball sampling method. In-depth interviews were conducted face to face. Semi-structured questionnaire developed by the researchers was used to collect the data. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was employed to explore the themes to predict patient non-adherence.

Findings
The study results indicate that economic factors, health system related factors, social factors and psychological factors impact patient non-adherence. Patient non-adherence includes medication non-adherence and lifestyle modification non-adherence.

Research limitations/implications
Being cross sectional in design, the results may not be as appropriate as the results derived from a longitudinal study given that non-adherence occurs over time.

Practical implications
Patient non-adherence is a global health issue. Multidisciplinary approach to enhance patient adherence to treatment should form the part of public health care policy.