Impact of Personal, Cultural and Religious Beliefs on Medication Adherence Among Patients with Chronic Diseases at University Hospital in Northwest Ethiopia

Background: Subjective beliefs about chronic disease conditions and their drug management are among factors determining adherence to medications that are amenable to interventions. Patient-level factors such as personal, cultural, and religious beliefs about diseases, and medication use may have a significant impact on medication adherence. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of personal, cultural and religious beliefs on medication adherence behavior among patients with chronic follow-up.

Patients And Methods: An institutional-based cross-sectional study design was conducted among chronic ambulatory patients from July to August 2021. The data was collected through an interviewer administered questionnaire. Initially stratified sampling technique was used to include proportional participants from different disease conditions, and systematic random sampling was employed to enroll eligible patients from each subgroup. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages were computed for categorical variables and mean with (standard deviation ±SD) used for continuous variables. Logistic regression model was employed to determine variable with poor adherence. A 95% confidence interval with P-value ≤0.05 was used to declare statically significance.

Results: Among the 404 participants, more than half (51%) were males. The mean (±SD) age of the patients was 47.8 ± 14.8 years. Patients with strong belief in the harm of medications were found 4 times more likely to have poor medication adherence than those with weak belief in the harm of medications (AOR = 4.027, 95% CI:1.232-13.161, P = 0.021). In contrast, having strong personal belief regarding the necessity of medications were found to be less likely to have poor medication adherence (AOR = 0.368, 95% CI: 0.220-0.615, P < 0.001).

Conclusion: This study generalized that most of the patients were poor adherent to their medications. Personal beliefs were found to influence medication adherence of the patients. Future studies could be needed to explore and identify how these factors affect patients' medication adherence.