The theme of the meeting was `Compliance'.
The morning session, chaired by Dr Hugh McGavock, Drug Utilisation Research Unit, Belfast, consisted of presentations from invited speakers on the subject of compliance. This was prompted by the imminent publication of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Great Britain Working Party report on compliance in medicine taking `From compliance to concordance'.
Professor Marshall Marinker, Chairman of the Working Party (RPSGB), set the scene by describing the background to the interim consultative document `Partnership in medicine taking'. He then used vignettes to illustrate the problem of what has previously been termed compliance. He then emphasized the multidisciplinary and wide ranging nature of the working party members, and explained how the consultative document had been produced.
The consultative document had been reviewed by a wide number and variety of people, and 19 written replies had been received. Further work resulting from these comments included feedback from researchers currently working in the ยฎeld and focus groups with patients and general practitioners.
These two additional strategies had given fresh insights and emphasized the need to construct a new model for `compliance'. The old model was based on an irrational non-compliant patient and a rational general practitioner. The word adherence could be used to refer to the technical aspects of the interaction between patient and general practitioner, to describe the optimization of health gain compatible with what the patient desires and is capable of achieving. However, the future model as agreed by the Working Party will be based on the term concordance to imply recognition of the fact that all medicine taking is an experiment by the patient, just as prescribing is an experiment by the doctor.