The social construction of noncompliance: Implications for cross-cultural geriatric practice

Research data suggest that noncompliance is a subjective, provider-constructed category of unacceptable patient behaviors. Providers define noncompliance broadly as the extent to which patients' behaviors deviate from expectations of appropriate, proper and reasonable patient behavior. In addition, providers assess the intent underlying their patients' noncompliant acts. Their assessments, in turn, serve as the bases for the strategies they construct to manage patients' noncompliant behaviors. Viewing noncompliance as a provider-constructed category of unacceptable patient behaviors has two implications for cross-cultural geriatric practice: (1) It suggests that ethnic minority elders, particularly those whose behaviors deviate from providers' expectations, are likely to be perceived and treated by providers as being noncompliant; and (2) It suggests that remedying noncompliance is as much a matter of changing providers' expectations as it is of changing patients' behaviors.