Integrative Literature Review on the Concept of Adherence (Research Paper Sample)

Integrative Literature Review on the Concept of Adherence
The Lived Experience of the Afro-Caribbean Male
Non-Adherent to Prostate Cancer Screening
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Abstract
The present paper provided an integrative literature review focused on the concept of adherence to health programs/plans by the public, with specific interests on adherence to prostate cancer screening among Afro-Caribbean men. According to the review, the concept of adherence denotes the reliability and consistence with which members of the public can follow a preventative, testing/screening and treatment plan recommended by professional healthcare providers. Contemporary concept of adherence is an improved version of the concept of compliance, where a collaborative partnership between healthcare providers and the patients for optimal outcomes has replaced the traditional mandatory obligation of compliance. The concept of adherence mandates a novel theoretical perspective that integrated several theories, mainly the Health Belief Model, the Extended Parallel Process, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Social Practice Theory, to review the adherence of Afro-Caribbean males to prostate cancer screening from a theoretical perspective.
The concept of adherence integrates an assortment of relationships in the life of patients, in the operations of the health care providers, and in the realities and progress of a specific disease such as prostate cancer. Such relationships include the needs of the patients, economic viability of target population, patient experiences, socio-cultural perceptions, level of awareness in the society, knowledge of the target population, and health status of the community. The paper so reviewed several empirical studies previous conducted and whose findings are relevant to the concept of adherence, most notably the studies conducted by Consedine et al. (2006), Mata et al. (2012), Kleier (2010), and Sweetman et al. (2006).

Contents
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Abstract  PAGEREF _Toc412331383 \h
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Contents  PAGEREF _Toc412331384 \h
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Introduction  PAGEREF _Toc412331385 \h
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The Concept of Adherence among Jamaican Males  PAGEREF _Toc412331386 \h
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Structural Synopsis of the Present Review  PAGEREF _Toc412331387 \h
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Theoretical Perspectives  PAGEREF _Toc412331388 \h
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a) The Health Belief Model  PAGEREF _Toc412331389 \h
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b) The Extended Parallel Process  PAGEREF _Toc412331390 \h
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c) The Theory of Planned Behavior  PAGEREF _Toc412331391 \h
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d) The Social Practice Theory  PAGEREF _Toc412331392 \h
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Description of Relationships  PAGEREF _Toc412331393 \h
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Research Approaches  PAGEREF _Toc412331394 \h
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Summary and Recommendations for Future Research  PAGEREF _Toc412331395 \h
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Summary of the Review  PAGEREF _Toc412331396 \h
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Recommendations for Future Research on the Concept of adherence  PAGEREF _Toc412331397 \h
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References  PAGEREF _Toc412331398 \h
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Integrative Literature Review on the Concept of Adherence: The Lived Experience of Afro-Caribbean Male Non-Adherent to Prostate Cancer Screening
Introduction
The Concept of Adherence among Jamaican Males
Providing an integrative literature review, the present paper primarily focuses on the concept of adherence to health programs by the public (both patients and high-risk populations). According to Hughes (2012) adherence (to medication) denotes the extent to which specific patients reliably and consistently maintain a medication plan as is prescribed by a professional healthcare provider. Beyond the medication perspective, adherence thus denotes the reliability and consistence with which members of the public (incorporating patients and high-risk population groups), can follow a preventative, testing/screening and treatment plan recommended by professional healthcare providers (Mata et al., 2012). Adherence is an improved version of the concept of compliance (Bissonnette, 2008), where adherence relies on a collaborative partnership between healthcare providers and the patients for optimal outcomes, and compliance has traditionally depicted a mandatory requirement obligated on a patient (Gould & Mitty, 2010). Adherence denotes “concordance, agreement, cooperation and partnership” between patients and health care providers as argued by Bissonnette (2008, p. 634)
The review focuses on the case of the lived experience of Afro-Caribbean males who do not reliably adhere to screening programs for prostate cancer. As argued hereafter, it is so critically essential for health are providers and scholars, particularly those practicing or studying professional nursing, to consider why a high-risk population would not adhere to a critically essential health care program for the prevention and treatment of such a fatal condition as prostate cancer. A similar question of why is affirmed by the fact that, 40 – 50% of patients in the US never adhere to essential medication regimens, and which according to Hughes (2012), only increases the risk for negative and even fatal health outcomes besides increased and unsustainable medical costs.
The concept of adherence is particularly sensitive for those practicing or studying professional nursing because they have the first-hand interaction with patients, or what Hughes (2012) describes as a “personal connection to patients” (p. 22). In a qualitative study conducted in Burundi among tuberculosis patients, Carlsson et al. (2014) concluded that nurse play a critical role when enhancing the adherence of these patients to medication. In agreement, Mata et al. (2012) had previously conducted a critically review of previous research on prostate cancer in Brazil, and highlighted on the role of nursing to patients’ adherence to screening examinations and diagnosis. By investigating adherence of Afro-Caribbean males to prostate cancer screening programs is an urgently essential contribution to future research, since such findings will help nursing practice and scholarship and engages understand the “continuing evolution of adherence strategies” and perhaps determine how best to attain optimal adherence among this target population (Gould & Mitty, 2010, p. 290).
Structural Synopsis of the Present Review
The integrative literature review will hereafter attempt to build knowledge about the adherence concept for the selected target group (Afro-Caribbean males) from the perspective of a critical health care program (prostate cancer screening). The review will first highlight the theoretical template upon which adherence as a concept is defined and understood in the literature, before briefly highlighting the key variables and their interrelationships when studying the adherence of Afro-Caribbean males to prostate cancer screening. Using a narrative format, the integrative review of recent and most reliable literature will focus on what is already known in the literature as well as what should be known after the ideal future research is identified, justified and recommended.
Having already identified and described the concept under review in the introductory section, subsequent sections of the paper will provide a brief discussion of theoretical perspectives that have been used to describe the concept of adherence. Thereafter, the paper will then describe the relationships that have been discovered between dimensions of adherence and related phenomena. This will then be followed by a section identifying and discussing a set of previous research studies (as published by peer-reviewed academic journals) on the adherence of Afro-Caribbean males to prostate cancer screening. Ultimately, the review will terminate with a brief summary and recommendations for future research.
Theoretical Perspectives
This section of the review will provide a brief discussion of theoretical perspectives that have been used to describe the adherence concept in the literature. To begin with, the present review advances a novel theoretical perspective that integrates several perspectives previously proposed by four distinct theories. The present review must necessarily integrate several theoretical perspectives, rather than focus on one theory. To exemplify, Kleier (2010) investigated how Haitian-American men were influenced by the fear of and susceptibility to prostate cancer, thus defining the adherence of this population to prostate cancer screening. According to the researcher, the study required an integrated theoretical model constituting “a construct from the health belief model and the extended parallel process model” (Kleier, 2010, p. 179).
In concurrence to the assertion by Kleier (2010), the present literature review advances the integration of four theoretical models, when considering the adherence of Afro-Caribbean males to prostate cancer screening from a theoretical perspective, namely:
The Health Belief Model
The Extended Parallel Process
The Theory of Planned Behavior
The Social Practice Theory
These theories and their symmetrical integration by the concept of adherence among Afro-Caribbean males in prostate cancer screening, constitutes the theoretical review advanced by ...