A Duty to Care:
The Role of a Nurse in Circumstances of Patient Nonadherence
Health care professionals are all too often aware of the lifestyle choices that have led the patient to seek treatment in their care. However, the implications of these lifestyle choices and issues that can arise from nonadherence are often downplayed or simply disregarded by the patients despite the urgency of the matter being expressed by the health care professionals. In other words, sometimes, the patients refuse to alter their lifestyle for the preservation of their own health. This can be frustrating, to say the very least, but it does not, under any circumstances, dismiss the health care professionals from their duty of care (Laken, 1983).…