Adherence

The truth is that all humans find it hard to translate the very best intentions into consistent action. We only need to look to our New Year resolutions to see how commonly we fail to imbed new habits, despite really wanting to. In human medicine non-adherence, even in high-stakes situations, can be shockingly high. For example, up to 55% of donor transplant recipients are non-adherent with anti-rejection medication recommendations despite intention to adhere being high*.

Typical approaches to improving adherence involve rational appeals through education and prompts in the form of reminders. Both of these play an important role, but neither fully address the psychological factors which cause the giant gap between intention and behaviour. If we’re not able to shift the dial on chronic medication adherence then outcomes are suboptimal for animal, client and vet practice.

Topics covered:

– A window into clients’ lives

– The role of memory; how to make info stick

– Subconscious drivers of long-term adherence

– Why commitment and consistency matter

– How to help make behaviour automatic

The session will build gradually so that by the end of the day you will have built a personalised best-practice approach to driving adherence. You’ll be armed with all the tools to support your clients in imbedding the right behaviours.

*Shi YX, Liu CX, Liu F, et al. (2020) Frontiers in Pharmacol. 11, article 578887