Explaining treatment procedures, physicians' instructions, diets, and medications to patients.
The most common factors influencing frequency of medicine administration included physicians' instructions (61.7%), degree of elevated temperature (14.9%), and instructions on the medication leaflet (13.7%).
Additionally, the most common factors influencing the dose of antipyretics were physicians' instructions (55.0%), and instructions on the medication leaflet (14.9%); (Table 4).
They relied on physicians' instructions as "... it is not part of the ward plan" (#1) or "... there is no time" (#6) to undertake a TB risk assessment.
A previous study has also shown that patients with low literacy have difficulty comprehending medical information and physicians instructions and vice versa [ 24].
Measuring patients' compliance is a complex problem as many methods exist to determine how well patients follow physicians' instructions regarding a treatment regimen[ 28, 29].
According to this definition, compliance is the extent to which certain behaviour (for example, following physician's orders or implementing healthier lifestyles) is in accordance with the physicians' instructions or health care advice.
In summary, responses from general practitioners in this study implied that they did not conduct hypertension consultations effectively due to lack of consultation time, which was compounded by patients' poor compliance with physicians' instructions.
74 Limited health literacy is common among individuals with diabetes 75 and has been associated with poor diabetes knowledge, fewer self-care behaviors, 73, 74 more self-reported complications, 76 increased health care costs, 77 poorer understanding of physicians' instructions, 78 and worse glycemic control.
