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Transcript: Michael W. Painter, M.D.

Communication between physician and patient as a productive means to addressing non-compliance

[Painter:]
As a physician—I mean your partnership with a patient, you have to understand what they understand about the particular medication that you’re prescribing. What does insulin mean to you? What does this diabetes medication mean to you? What else is going on in your life? Even if you tell me that you’re going to take a medication, are you really going to? If you’re adamantly refusing, then why is that? I had a patient at the Seattle Indian Health Board who for a variety of reasons—and she’d been a patient for many years at the clinic, and for a variety of reasons people had written her off as non-compliant because she had very poorly controlled diabetes and refused adamantly to take insulin. What it was, was she was homeless, and was really afraid she was going to have a low blood sugar reaction.