Compliance profiles of paediatric patients in an outpatient department.

A cross-sectional study was carried out in paediatric patients with acute illnesses attending an outpatient clinic at Angau Memorial Hospital, Lae. The aim of the study was to estimate the level of compliance to previously prescribed medication. 45 sick children were included in this study. Their parents or guardians were interviewed and their health record books carefully examined for details of prescribed and administered medication. Poor compliance to prescribed medication was observed in 38% of cases. A number of reasons for the poor compliance were documented. In a second, closely related study designed to determine the reliability of oral medicine ingestion, 348 children were enlisted. In 7% of them oral medicine ingestion was not satisfactory. These results emphasize the need to carefully consider each sick child individually, especially with regard to optimizing compliance, whenever drugs are prescribed.