[The clinical significance of compliance]

The authors deal with a particular type of working alliance, called "compliance", which may be defined as mutual agreement between patient and physician with respect to prevention and therapy. This type of compliance may be influenced by the kind of disease (e.g. low compliance in psychiatric illness), by the mode of referral (verbal or written), by the kind of hospital care (an individual appointment with one particular physician in an outpatient department makes for better compliance) and by medication (intravenous or oral administration and color and size of pills). The number of medicines prescribed is of particular importance for compliance, i.e. the greater the number of drugs prescribed per day, the more the patient tends to be unreliable in taking them. Furthermore, the time spent in the waiting room, the amount of information given to the patient and the clarity of the instructions given by the physician play an important role. Situational factors and interaction in the physician-patient relationship seem to be more relevant than specific personality traits.