• Stéphanie Sidorkiewicz, Viet-Thi Tran, Cécile Cousyn, Elodie Perrodeau, and Philippe Ravaud.
• Department of General Medicine, Paris Descartes University, Paris, France METHODS Team, INSERM U1153, Epidemiology and Statistics Sorbonne Paris Cité Research Centre, France.
• Ann Fam Med. 2016 Sep 1; 14 (5): 415421415-21.

PurposeAmong patients on long-term medical therapy, we compared (1) patient and physician assessments of drug adherence and of drug importance and (2) drug adherence reported by patients with drug importance as assessed by their physicians.MethodsWe recruited to the study patients receiving at least 1 long-term drug treatment from both hospital and ambulatory settings in France. We compared drug adherence reported by patients and drug importance assessed by physicians using Spearman correlation coefficients. Reasons for nonadherence were collected with open-ended questions and classified as intentional or unintentional.ResultsBetween April and August 2014, we recruited 128 patients taking 498 drugs. Patients and physicians showed only weak agreement in their assessments of drug adherence (r = -0.25; 95% CI, -0.37 to -0.11) and drug importance (r = 0.07; 95% CI, 0.00 to 0.13). We did not find any correlation between physician-assessed drug importance and patient-reported drug adherence (r = -0.04; 95% CI, -0.14 to 0.06). In all, 94 (18.9%) of the drugs that physicians considered important were not correctly taken by patients. Patients intentionally did not adhere to 26 (48.1%) of the drugs for which they reported reasons for nonadherence.ConclusionsWe found substantial discordance between patient and physician evaluations of drug adherence and drug importance. Nearly 20% of drugs considered important by physicians were not correctly taken by patients. These findings highlight the need for better patient-physician collaboration in drug treatment.© 2016 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.

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