Variation in Patients' Compliance with Doctors' Orders: Medical Practice and Doctor-Patient Interaction

Abstract

Doctor-patient interactions were tape-recorded and coded according to a modified system of Interaction Process Analysis. These data, combined with a series of patient interviews and a self-administered questionnaire completed by physicians, were analyzed to determine the extent of patient compliance with doctors' orders and how variations in patient compliance are influenced by some selected patient characteristics and by the structure and process of the doctor-patient relationship. None of the demographic characteristics of patients investigated here was associated with compliance. However, the ways in which doctors and patients initially fit their activity into the presumably institutionalized patterns of behavior appropriate for doctor-patient interaction and the way they deviate over time from the institutionalized role expectations was found to be related to variations in patient compliance.