Development of a Tool for Assessing Patient Compliance on Various Ayurvedic Formulations used for Internal Administration

Introduction: Compliance is a process where the patient follows the prescribed and dispensed regimen as intended by the prescriber. Poor compliance has been reported as it is the most common cause of non-response to medication. There is no single best indicator to assess patient compliance in Health Research. This study aims to develop and validate a new questionnaire considering the pharmaceutical properties of Ayurvedic medicines to measure patient compliance.

Methods: The first phase consisted of a qualitative phase to identify the variables to measure patient compliance through in-depth interviews among five doctors and focus group discussion with eight practitioners, and pre-test with respondents, experts, and peers. The second phase was a quantitative phase to assess the respective responses of patients towards the questionnaire through a cross-sectional survey among 106 subjects as a pilot study.

Results: The qualitative analysis reported variables that were seen spread across eight domains were used to measure compliance.

Conclusion: Ayurvedic treatment is personalized and there is always a scope for a remake of formulation designing for each individual. Sticking on to appropriate prescriptions after properly assessing the needs of the patient and the reason for their non-compliance can bring a revolution in terms of cost-effectiveness and time. The wastage of medicines, whether raw drugs or processed ones can be prevented by recognizing the factors for non-compliance. There is always a scope for improvement with further alike or more developed research in patient compliance in Ayurveda.