An Assessment of Medication Adherence in the Self-Regulatory Model

Abstract

It is essential to evaluate psychosocial components that influence medication adherence, critical health behaviour for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients. It has been developed many models to explain medication adherence. This is one of the research Hughes’ (2011) thesis suggested that the Self-Regulatory Model (SRM) is the most usable model for the RA. According to the literature, both RA and AS have similar clinical patterns and treatment styles (Arturi et al., 2013; Gonzalez et al., 2015; Henriksson, From & Stratelis, 2014). Therefore, in this study medication adherence is handled in the SRM. SRM focused on the mediator role of beliefs about medicines between illness perception and medication adherence relationships. This study, it is aimed to test the appropriateness of the SRM in medication adherence for RA and AS patients. This study’s sample consists of 112 RA and 110 AS patients treated to medicines and whose ages are between 18-65. The Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) was used to evaluate the illness perception, The Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ) to evaluate the thoughts about the medication, the Medication Adherence Report Scale to assess the adherence the behaviour of the patients were asked to fill out by patients. The data was analyzed in Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) by LISREL software. It was found that this model is acceptable for RA and AS patients ( /sd= 1,50; RMSEA=.047; sRMR=.072; CFI=.92; GFI=.90) but only mediation to ‘specific’ beliefs about medicines. It was seen general beliefs about medicine do have not a mediator role. As a result, SRM is usable for RA and AS which are presentive diseases of the rheumatology group of patients’ medication adherence. It may be used in interventions for improving medication adherence of rheumatic patients especially RA and AS group.