Talk:Patient adherence

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 13 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Enlawal, Biomedstudent156 (article contribs).

Merge

The proposed merging is a very good idea Alanmcleod 18:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

terminology: adherence vs. compliance

'Adherence' is the more useful term in describing the degree to which a patient follows a prescribed health regimen.

'Compliance' should not be used to describe the degree to which a patient adheres to a prescribed regimen because the term 'compliance':

1. denotes a power relationship between the prescriber and patient ( i.e. and implies that the patient is subordinate to the authoritarian prescriber and must submit to an unpleasant prescription )

2. implies that the patient is being commanded and challenged to obey in the same way that a law commands and challenges a citizen to obey (and thus, when a patient is 'non-compliant' one is essentially saying the patient is a 'scofflaw').

An intelligent patient will typically feel resentment and mistrust toward a practitioner who harbors this cynical "compliance/non-compliance" attitude.

'Adherence' appropriately describes the actions of patient towards the prescribed regimen without conferring an authoritarian position to the prescriber ( physician ). The term 'adherence' removes the connotation of law enforcement and submission. The term 'adherence' opens a constructive line of inquiry when a health care regimen is not followed. The term 'adherence' invites the patient and physician to engage successfully in a collaborative process to prevent illness or restore health. Constantinos Voulgaropoulos 02:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Compliance is a term still widely used by health care professionals in the UK, it has been noted that the term may seem derogatory but as the ethos was shifting to using a concordance approach instead the term has remained. --Nate1481( ^t/_c) 09:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Still case that in UK dosctors talk, of compliance by patients, and concordance as the approach taken to engage patients in the process of deciding about treatment. Adherence is not a term I encounter. David Ruben ^Talk 23:53, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

All three terms (compliance, adherence, concordance) are used interchangeably, however there is a noticeable trend toward replacing 'compliance' with 'adherence' and using 'concordance' to refer to specific situations where patients participate in the choice of treatment regimen. The purpose of Wikipedia is to be a general reference for the public worldwide, and so I think it is best to include all three terms and note they all refer to the same issue: the degree to which patients followed a prescribed treatment regimen. It is also reasonable to include a discussion of the terminology debate to explain why there are three terms in common use for this process. I've added a section like this for consideration.

related references (see also, Terminology section in main article):

• Tilson HH. Adherence or compliance? Changes in terminology. Ann Pharmacother. (2004);38(1):161-2. PMID 14742813
• Ngoh LN. Health literacy: A barrier to pharmacist–patient communication and medication adherence. J Am Pharm Assoc. (2009);49:e132–e149. PMID 19748861

BSW-RMH (talk) 16:43, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I would support a rename of this article to Adherence and have the other terms redirect here. I see the word "adherence" used in the majority of literature. Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:51, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

As usual, we look for wp:MEDRS to support our choices. The best I've found so far are:

• De las Cuevas C (2011 May). "Towards a clarification of terminology in medicine taking behavior: compliance, adherence and concordance are related although different terms with different uses". Curr Clin Pharmacol. 6 (2): 74–7. doi:10.2174/157488411796151110. PMID 21592067. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Cabrera-Abreu C (2011 May). "It is now personal: recent views on the assessment of therapeutic infidelity in severe mental illness". Curr Clin Pharmacol. 6 (2): 78–82. doi:10.2174/157488411796151138. PMID 21592068. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Horne R, Weinman J, Barber N, Elliott R, Morgan M, Cribb A, Kellar I (December 2005). "Concordance, adherence and compliance in medicine taking: Report for the National Co-ordinating Centre for NHS Service Delivery and Organisation R & D (NCCSDO)" (PDF). Retrieved 24 Oct 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

While I have not seen the full text of the former two papers, it is clear that there has been a recent terminological shift from "compliance" towards "adherence" in describing patient behaviour in taking medication, while also acknowledging that the terms have somewhat different meanings. It would seem appropriate to for our article to discuss the distinction and the shift in usage. I don't think it matters much which title the article carries, so long as the necessary redirects are in place. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:51, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Commonly, psychologists and psychiatrists understand the two terms in the following way: "Adherence is an active choice of patients to follow through with the prescribed treatment while taking responsibility for their own well-being. Compliance is a passive behavior in which a patient is following a list of instructions from the doctor." Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5419016/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DF:9721:9334:7430:8A34:BD3D:7554 (talk) 14:38, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

External Review Comments

The following comments are from an external reviewer BSW-RMH as part of the new joint Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project.

Hello Compliance (medicine) article writers and editors, This article had only one major debate on this talk page, for which I have provided a suggested resolution-that is adding a section on Terminology to the article. The rest of this review will primarily focus on fact checking and adding relevant references to address the citation needed tags throughout the article. In addition, I hope that I can offer some useful suggestions to enhance it further. Specific suggestions are as follows:

Societal impact

I've added this section, but it needs to be expanded to discuss the impact of non-compliance on the public health, healthcare costs, and patient's clinical outcome. Useful resources for this information include:

See economic statistics presented in this article with associated primary references:

• http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/720999

"Poor adherence is the primary reason for suboptimal clinical benefit. It causes medical and psychosocial complications of disease, reduces patients’ quality of life, and wastes health care resources.Taken together, these direct consequences impair the ability of health care systems around the world to achieve population health goals."

• WHO Adherence to long-term therapies: evidence for action. (2003) ISBN 92 4 154599 2

Example facts that can be incorporated taken verbatim from the APA Highlight Newsletter: "Approximately 125,000 deaths annually are attributed to nonadherence, or twice the number killed each year in automobile accidents. Up to 11% of hospital admissions and 40% of nursing home admissions are due to lack of adherence with medication therapy. The direct and indirect costs of nonadherence total approximately $100 billion per year in the United States."

• APA Highlights Newsletter, Oct 2004, V.7(4)

BSW-RMH (talk) 18:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Compliance issues

• Updated statistics and citations added for prescription fill rates. BSW-RMH (talk) 00:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
• Updated statistics and citations added for course completion. The list of example compliance rates and consequences could be expanded to further improve this section. BSW-RMH (talk) 01:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, and I apologize that it's fallen on deaf ears so far. I will work on implementing your excellent suggestions in the next week or so, and thanks again. :) MastCell ^Talk 04:15, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! We were asked this week if the articles we reviewed have been updated and are ready for translation to other languages. I'll make a note that someone is actively working on this one. BSW-RMH (talk) 15:16, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Concordance

As the lead states, "Compliance is commonly confused with concordance..." Would it be appropriate for Concordance (medicine) to have its own page? 86.181.64.67 (talk) 13:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Models of Compliance

How much should the article discuss the attempts at understanding Compliance. There are a number of theoretical/frameworks in the literature that work to model/understand/predict beyond the demographic risk factors for Non-Adherence already covered in 'Compliance issues':

• Health Belief Model
• The Necessity-Concerns Framework
• the SIMPLE list of techniques
• Physician-Patient Concordance

There's also much on Multivariate modeling of clinic no-show behavior; Does that fall under Compliance? Timetraveler3.14 (talk) 21:45, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Ironically, Language Concordance, Cultural Concordance, Racial/Ethnic Concordance

Some current patient-centered research discussion in improving patient concordance with physician direction and guidance is the medical supply-side role in concordance between patient and doctor that involves language, culture, race, and ethnicity 'matches' between provider and patient and patient populations. Could this be integrated into the article somewhere and somehow, or should it become a distinct Wikipedia article? MaynardClark (talk) 20:48, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

References

Barriers to Adherence

I was thinking it may be beneficial to add more information about the barriers to adherence that are outlined by the World Health Organization. I already have information related to this in my sandbox under the sub-heading Barriers to Adherence. While this draft was initially meant to discuss antidepressant specifically, these barriers are applicable to all classes of medications according to the WHO. Anthonyb9798 (talk) 03:32, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone, I just added to the diabetes section specifically regarding how variations in perceived self-efficacy, risk assessment, immigration status etc. have been proven to be implicated in hindering/decreasing adherence for diabetics. The information included was mostly from meta-analysis and systematically peer reviewed journal articles. I believed this was worthy and relevant to add for diabetes since the disease requires life-long medication management/lifestyle changes and the section was a bit thin. It could possibly good to do this for the other disease/health complication sections as well. X.ay325 (talk) 05:15, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Compliance factors: duplicate information?

The sentence, "Until recently, this was termed 'non-compliance', which some regarded as meaning that someone did not follow the treatment directions due to irrational behavior or willful ignoring of instructions," seems to duplicate information given under Adherence (medicine)#Terminology, with references to LN Ngoh (2009) and(HH Tilson (2004). OK to remove it from Adherence (medicine)#Compliance factors? Frenezulo (talk) 13:20, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Adherence barriers

Under the subheading "Health literacy" there is a passage in paragraph 2 that reads "Educational qualifications help to determine an individual's position in the labour market, their level of income and therefore their access to resources." I'm unsure how this relates to health literacy, and it doesn't have a citation. Can we elaborate on this and cite a source(s), or remove it altogether? I'm still new to editing so I would like another's input if possible. If nobody responds, I'll leave it all be. Toodles! 184.100.172.155 (talk) 01:24, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Adherence in cancer treatment table - duplicated rows

The table that lists adherence rates for various cancer types (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adherence_(medicine)#Cancer) as identified by Partridge et al (2002) ends with four rows mentioning acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) but with four different rates of non-adherence.

It looks like these should be checked and the unnecessary rows removed.

This is my first interaction/contribution to Wikipedia, so I'm still learning how to use editing tools.

Cheers! Kajtebriga Brigic (talk) 15:27, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 20 April 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. In this RM, consensus favours moving the article away from parenthetical disambiguation in accordance with WP:NATURALDISAMBIGUATION. Strong evidence-based arguments were provided which show that "Patient adherence" is a highly prevalent term within reliable medical literature and databases. Policy dictates that our article titles must follow established usage in reliable sources rather than attempting to correct or prescribe industry terminology. (non-admin closure) Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 13:42, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

---

Adherence (medicine) → Patient adherence – or Patient compliance. Use of natural disambiguation is always preferable. "Adherence" is the preferred term in many circles and may be seen as having a broader definition. In practice, these are often used interchangeably. Google Ngram shows that "patient compliance" is more common than "patient adherence" but "medication adherence" is even more common than "patient compliance" and "medication compliance" is the least common of the four phrases. See also: Ngram for nonadherence/noncompliance. Since 2016, Google Scholar has approx. 321,000 for "medication adherence"; 147,000 for "patient compliance"; 134,000 for "patient adherence"; and 38,600 for "medication compliance". These concepts are frequently used in the context of prescribed medication regimens, though not exclusively. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:15, 20 April 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. {{GearsDatapacks|talk|contribs}} 09:06, 28 April 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley$\lor$investigateᛅ} 14:44, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

• Notified Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pharmacology and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:18, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose I am unsure of sources. I am opposing on my own understanding and intuition. I do not want to call this "patient adherence" because so far as I understand, this is not only a patient issue. It is about all the systems which get the treatment to the patient. The patient can be compliant, but perhaps they are unable to care for themselves, and the adherence is in control of a nurse, caretaker, or physician team. Adherence can also be an access issue, and for economic reasons or supply logistical reasons, patient compliance may not be possible.

There is a lot of text and framing in this article which frame this topic as willful patient choices and a matter of the character and duty of a patient. Again, I am not so familiar with the sources, but so far as I understand, adherence is more about good design of societal systems than patient choices. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

"Patient adherence" is meant to capture these factors and not "blame" the patient. The article does address this in a few places. The lead discusses factors that influence a patient's ability to "adhere" including physician access, the cost of prescription medications, poor communication, and others. There is also an entire section on Adherence (medicine) § Adherence factors. I am sympathetic to your position. The formal definitions and distinctions between "adherence" and "compliance" do not necessarily align with everyday usage and understanding by the general public or healthcare workers. Ultimately, we must follow usage in sources and any objection explicitly not based in this is against policy. This is spelled out in the Article titles policy at WP:COMMONNAME and is reflected in numerous guidelines. The article certainly needs improvement. We should anticipate and address discrepancies between usage within the field and interpretations or usage by the general public but the article title and usage within the article must align with reliable sources. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:15, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

@Myceteae: I agree with your finding that of the various two word terms, "patient adherence" and "patient compliance" are common names. I just think that "adherence" itself is the correct and most common name.

I could support a rename to "adherence", where this article becomes the main article for that term. The other concepts there are rarely or never called "adherence" anyway, and instead are just similar to that word.

Another concept of adherence could include things like vaccination policy or alternative medicine. I again hesitate to call this "patient adherence", because there are prominent and outspoken patients who match with physicians who have contrarian health advice that conflicts with medical consensus. "Adherence" to me communicates alignment with medical authority, so I would not consider a patient taking anti-vaccination advice or using disproven treatment from a fringe physician to be "adherent". Adding the word "patient" to the term communicates more subjectivity than I think is appropriate for this concept.

I am still open to changing but I am not persuaded that your argument based on traffic is sufficient evidence. Can you make an additional argument? Bluerasberry (talk) 16:25, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Given the limited number of entries on the dab page Adherence and the fact that the others are partial title matches, I would be fine with moving this article to Adherence. I'm not sure how these other topics fit in, however, and I don't necessarily support changing the scope of the article. Otherwise, I would just defer to the usage in reliable sources. These terms are widely used in mainstream medicine and public health, generally defined as the extent to which patients take their medications as prescribed or otherwise follow medical advice. Strictly speaking, this applies whether or not the advice is appropriate. Adherence to clinical guidelines or adherence to evidence-based recommendations are separate, related concepts with additional emphasis on provider behavior. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:50, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Y per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

• Adherence (medicine) → Adherence
• Adherence → Adherence (disambiguation)Adherence (disambiguation)

@Myceteae: I am not intending to propose a change the frame of the article or its scope to add any of my examples, which are minor facets of the concept.

Shall we wait to see if anyone else comments? If there is no objection, then I would prefer to do the title change through Wikipedia:Requested_moves#Requesting_controversial_and_potentially_controversial_moves. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:36, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry We can let the current RM play out and not start new one. I still have a slight preference for Patient adherence but would accept Adherence. Let's see what others have to say. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:47, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I somehow forgot we were already in a move discussion Bluerasberry (talk) 18:48, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

• Notified Talk:Adherence and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation of the discussion in progress and the alternative proposal to move Adherence (medicine) to Adherence and to move Adherence to Adherence (disambiguation). —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:53, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I saw the note at WT:MED. I dislike the "patient compliance" option. I don't have a strong preference between the others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, to clarify, I think this means you support a move, with no preference between Adherence and Patient adherence. Just confirming you agree that a move from the current parenthetical disambiguation is appropriate, or do you see keeping the current title as an equally good outcome? —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:17, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

I think that keeping the current title is one of several possible good outcomes. WP:MEDMOS advises against "Patient", so maybe the non-"Patient" options are slightly better. I've not done enough work to determine whether this is a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for Adherence. https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Adherence could be enlightening on that point, but it gave me an error message. Isaac (WMF), does the Wikinav tool need rebooted or something? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not convinced this is the primary topic for Adherence except that it may be the only article that could plausibly live at the base title. (I think the dictionary definition is the primary usage but that typically doesn't count towards "primary topic".) Thanks for highlighting WP:MEDMOS. It says that use of the word "patients" or "cases" when describing those who have a medical condition may be a sign that the article is written for healthcare professionals and not a general audience. I don't see that this advises against using "patient" when it is part of the common name and when the topic is the patient role. We have over 400 articles with "patient" in the title such as Doctor–patient relationship, Patient advocacy, Patient participation, Physician–patient privilege, Patient-controlled analgesia, Simulated patient, Patient abuse, Patient portal, Patients' rights, Patient safety organization, Patient safety, Patient-reported outcome, Patient experience, Patient recruitment, Patient-centered outcomes. There is simply no way to describe these topics without discussing "patients" and many of these don't have workable alternative titles. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:38, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, sometimes the word is appropriate. It may not be the sole or best option in this case.

There are possible alternatives for some of those, too. Patient-reported outcome could be a Self-reported outcome. Patient recruitment could be titled Participant recruitment. (Not everyone in a clinical trial is a "patient", after all.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't see those as improvements. The use of "patient" in these examples is more precise and aligns with common usage. In many (most?) clinical trials, participants may be defined as "patients" for the purposes of the trial. I shouldn't be getting into the weeds on other specific titles here, but collectively these are relevant to the question at hand. The current article discusses "patients" extensively and it would be inappropriate to rewrite it to avoid discussing the topic in the way it is described in reliable sources. As for the title, I'm not seeing much of a positive case for maintaining the WP:PARENDIS. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 19:38, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Maybe this article shouldn't use the word patients extensively, because it's probably a violation of WP:MEDMOS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

I disagree. The guidance doesn't actually say to not use the word, but cautions that referring to people with a medical condition as "patients" or "cases" may be a sign that the article is written for professionals rather than a general audience. The guidance kicks off with (emphasis included at the original; explanatory footnotes omitted): The article title should be the scientific or recognised medical name that is most commonly used in recent, high-quality, English-language medical sources, rather than a lay term (unscientific or slang name) or an historical eponym that has been superseded. The common names in the field are "compliance" and "adherence", often qualified as "patient compliance/adherence" or more narrowly as "medication compliance/adherence". The MOS does not tell us to avoid the usage that is common in the field or rely on euphemisms, awkward constructions, or imprecise language when explicitly and exclusively discussing patients. This usage conforms with the lay usage of patient so there is no conflict between the jargon and the vernacular here, and avoiding this usage is neither encyclopedic nor helpful to a general audience. MEDMOS also does not override the preference for WP:NATDIS over WP:PARENDIS in the Article titles policy. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 22:32, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Unlike questions of Heart attack vs Myocardial infarction, or Atorvastatin vs Lipitor, there is no "scientific or recognised medical name" for this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:31, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

And yet it is the subject of tens of thousands of articles in the medical literature and is defined by medical and public health authorities. Whichever guidance we think applies tells us to follow usage in reliable sources. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:03, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Which "medical and public health authorities" define "Patient adherence"? The World Health Organization defines the names of medications in International nonproprietary name. Their name is "the" name, officially, by law in some countries and by widespread adoption in the medical community around the world. Are you claiming that there is an equivalent for "Patient adherence"? Or did you really just mean that it's a WP:COMMONNAME? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

I mean both—these are the common names and they are given specific definitions in the fields of medicine and public health. This oft-cited WHO definition, for example:

Adherence is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “the extent to which a person’s behaviour—taking medication, following a diet, and/or executing lifestyle changes—corresponds with agreed recommendations from a health care provider.”

Google Scholar has 13,000 hits for "adherence"+"the extent to which a person’s behaviour". Here they call it "patient adherence", not just "adherence". "Medication adherence" is common and other variations include "therapeutic adherence", "adherence to therapy", etc. Other definitions are used, as well. Terminology is discussed in the article, although this could be improved. This article discusses patient adherence, patient compliance, and concordance. These are all closely related and, I think, appropriately covered in a single article. Many sources define distinctions between these terms, especially "compliance" vs. "adherence", and some have expressed a preference for "adherence". Because of these distinctions, a simple assessment of frequency of use in sources may be insufficient for selecting the best title, but we should select from among the most common names. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 19:06, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

That definition is sourced to this book:

• Adherence to Long-term Therapies: Evidence for Action. Geneva: World Health Organization. 2003. ISBN 978-92-4-154599-0.

which:

• does not use the term patient adherence,
• attributes this definition to "participants at the WHO Adherence meeting in June 2001" (not any official or definitive statement),
• describes that definition as merely "a helpful starting point", and
• does not indicate that the WHO has some special power to define this term

and importantly:

• Most of the rest of that page is complaints from the WHO about various failings in that definition.

I therefore think that the existence of this definition does not tell us that we should treat the name like an INN and ICD name.

Instead, I think this source shows that it's on par with any other high-quality reliable source. That means it's useful for deciding against patient adherence, since they don't actually use patient adherence. Let me quantify "don't actually use" for you: The book is entirely about adherence, and it is 198 pages long; it probably has somewhere around 75,000–100,000 words in it. The phrase "patient adherence" appears only five (5) times in the entire book (not counting lists of bibliographic citations). Something like 99.99% of the words in the book are not "patient adherence". If the argument for patient adherence is that the WHO has the right to choose the name and this is the name they've chosen, then I think this source is solid proof that the WHO doesn't prefer the name patient adherence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

*sigh* That is not at all the argument I made. Compliance and adherence are the common names. This article is about the concepts and their various definitions, which are described in detail in the literature, including problems with the definition. We should use natural disambiguation when possible and follow the usage in reliable sources. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:20, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Following the usage in that source doesn't allow natural disambiguation, unless you're claiming that the medical use is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which I doubt. At Google Books, both medical adherence and religious adherence (neither quoted) give me 1,000,000 ghits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

I’m relying on thousands of other sources that use “patient” for natural disambiguation, as I’ve said repeatedly. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 02:10, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Here's the Google Books Ngram with "medical adherence" and a couple other phrases added for comparison. "Patient adherence" is the most common of this bunch. Here are some additional search results:

Search Results

Database	"medical adherence"	"patient adherence"
Google Scholar	≈15,100 hits	≈405,000 hits
Wiley	735 hits	10,603 hits
Springer Nature	1,204 hits	14,462 hits

—Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 03:20, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NATURALDISAMBIGUATION. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:14, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.