HCMP: Non-compliance in Patients

I attended my first meeting with the Health Careers Mentorship Program, a student organization that I was accepted to last semester. The purpose is to expose students to shadowing opportunities of health professionals and other health-related information. An alumnus of UT and HCMP and current 3rd-year medical student at UTMB, Angie, is hosting a discussion series for us about some of the ethical issues in medicine to help prepare us for the realities of our chosen career paths, and today's was non-compliance in patients.

The issue revolves around the fact that a major problem in medicine is that patients will refuse to take their medications and otherwise not follow a doctor's suggestions about their health, for various reasons. We talked about a lot of them (e.g. finances, feeling better, etc.), but the most interesting one for me was about side effects of many medications. There are several examples of medications that make patients gain weight, feel drowsy, or other things that, on paper far outweigh the prospect of being cured from a serious condition but in reality can be major reasons for patients to stop taking medications even if they are still experiencing symptoms.

My mother always tells me about the benefits of Chinese Medicine - her profession - because acupuncture and herbal treatments don't have side effects. Her knowledge is the reason that the last time I took medication was about two years ago and only because I had dental work done and was painful to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. I still have the otherwise-full bottle of aspirin. I literally haven't taken anything else since, and I believe that I hadn't taken any drugs for a couple years prior to that as well.

When I think about having to prescribe these medications to patients, which can cause them headaches, diarrhea, skin irritation, drowsiness, weight gain, or more severe symptoms such as seizures, blindness, and sleep driving, I'm not sure about that. I want to work in health - there's no Plan B - but if I know how effective Chinese Medicine can be, even in cases of cancer (my little brother Justin was cured of childhood leukemia with it), how can I dish out medications that I haven't used myself in something like 10 years?