Article Figures & Data
Figures
Tables
The Article in Brief
Medication Taking in Coronary Artery Disease: A Systematic Review and Qualitative Synthesis
Mohammed A. Rashid , and colleagues
Background There is compelling evidence that cardiovascular medications help prevent coronary artery disease, but many patients discontinue treatment. This analysis of existing research seeks to understand the factors that influence patients' decisions to continue or stop taking medications.
What This Study Found Patients use complex decision-making processes when deciding whether to continue their medications. Some patients hold fatalistic beliefs about their disease, whereas others feel they have been cured by interventional procedures, both leading to decisions to discontinue medication. Patients who adapt to being a "heart patient" are positive about medication taking. Relationships with prescribing clinicians are critically important to patients; clinicians' inaccessibility and insensitive terminology negatively affect patients' perceptions of treatments. By adopting a more open approach, clinicians can engage patients in a discourse about their medications. Moreover, providing medication-specific information when initiating therapy, improving the transition between secondary and primary care, and explaining the risk of disease recurrence may help to modify patient attitudes toward drugs to prevent further cardiovascular disease.
Implications
- Strategies to encourage patients with coronary artery disease to continue taking medications should recognize the key role of the prescribing clinician.