An important aspect of medicinal treatment is having the patient take the medicines prescribed by the doctor. However, a previous questionnaire about medication compliance and adherence showed that approximately 50% of patients forget to take their medicines. In this study, the status of patient medication-taking behavior and factors affecting adherence were investigated through a survey involving 226 patients who presented at Gifu Municipal Hospital from November 2009 to February 2010. The survey items included patient characteristics (age, sex, occupation, side effects, allergies, etc.), medication status (dosing time, medicine formulations), and factors affecting medication adherence (awareness of taking medication, awareness of illness and medicines, life rhythm, character, relationship of trust with doctor or pharmacist, use of medicine information leaflets). Overall, 73% of patients took medicines as directed. Evaluation by medication adherence status revealed that patients with poor adherence most frequently forgot to take their medicines after lunch and between meals. A separate factor analysis of good and poor medication adherence groups showed significant differences between the groups for 18 of 30 factors. Then, using Customer Satisfaction analysis and excluding factors related to personality, 4 factors for improvement were selected from the remaining 16 factors. These findings suggest that patient medication adherence increases when the factors of “regularity of life rhythm”, “regularity of meals”, “trust in pharmacists”, and “use of medicine information leaflets” are improved.
