Enhancing Patient Adherence (Shevlin - Online)

Course overview

Patient adherence continues to be a frustrating problem for healthcare professionals. Not only is it frustrating for therapy clinicians, but we also know that non-adherence increases healthcare costs by increasing the amount of care our patients require and by increasing the rate of hospital admissions. Clinicians and organizations are always looking for methods to increase patient engagement and adherence. It is known that when we allow our patients to collaborate in healthcare decisions, we can improve patient engagement and adherence. Research shows that therapy clinicians place value in collaborating in health care decisions with their patients, but there is limited evidence of this being placed into practice. In fact, a recent study demonstrated only 5% of initial therapy consultations incorporated shared patient-clinician decision-making techniques. This course will discuss strategies that therapy clinicians can use to improve shared decision-making with patients. By increasing patient engagement and patient healthcare literacy, we can improve our patients' ability to become more proactive in self-management strategies.