Physician-patient power struggles: their role in noncompliance

Physicians have tended to label the patient who doesn't follow their advice as resistant and noncompliant. However, compliance studies have not identified the physician's sometimes unwitting complicity in the noncompliance. Some physician-patient partnerships are marked by an intensifying power struggle which may have more to do with the emotional needs of each party than with the specific content around which the struggle is focused. This article discusses how these power struggles can be activated and what the physician can do to defuse the struggle and work effectively with noncompliant patients.