Community pharmacy, treatment adherence and COVID-19

Non-adherence to treatment is becoming more and more of a global issue and is responsible for the fact that expected health results are getting further away from reality and increasing spending on healthcare. To understand why a patient is not adhering to treatment it is necessary to identify the factors involved in his or her specific case and personalize the strategies to be followed. In order to approach non-adherence to treatment from the community pharmacy perspective, we use the protocol from the ADHe+ guide on the dispensing and rational use of the drug, which classifies non-adhering patients into three profiles (confused, wary and trivializing), facilitating the task of assessing their beliefs with regards to a certain medicine and at a given time. Following the protocol suggested by the guide, pharmacists can detect non-adherence to the medicines the patient collects and does not collect and look into the causes. However, the current times of pandemic that we are experiencing—caused by COVID-19—are changing the pattern of chronicity. Fear of infection, the slowing down of care processes due to the new hygiene measures, telemedicine, quarantine, and the lack of awareness about the new situation by both the patients and healthcare professionals may have a great impact on therapeutic adherence.