The patient should be instructed for full compliance of drug treatment regularly. Common errors to follow a prescribed regimen by a patient may be omission, purpose (taking medicine for wrong reasons), dosage, timing or sequence, adding medicine not prescribed or premature termination of drug therapy. Similarly many factors may be related to noncompliance comprising psychological, environmental, and social factors, characteristics of the drug regimen, and nature of the physician-patient interaction. The patient should make sure to understand the nature and prognosis of his illness, usefulness of the medicine, unwanted effects and signs of efficacy and improving step in disease process.
The prescription may be in any language, but the instructions should be oral as well as written in the patient's language, specially in the less educated, poor patients with a risk prone personality. The physician must explore the patient's eating, sleeping, worthing and habits and prescription should be written accordingly. The physician's relationship with the patient as how clearly he explains the treatment regimen has a powerful impact on compliance. Directions on prescription orders should include all the details necessary for a patient to know how, with what, when and how long to take the medicines.