Dealing With the Obstacles in Adhering to Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy

Improving patient adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is essential to effective treatment and represents a major challenge confronting healthcare providers. Because of their holistic perspective, nurses are uniquely qualified to identify the psychosocial and practical obstacles to full adherence and help patients deal with these problems. Studies have shown that many factors related to the disease, the patient, the provider, and the treatment regimen all play important roles in adopting and maintaining adherent behavior. Therefore, any attempt toward improving adherence should include adherence assessment and an approach that targets the patient, the provider, and the regimen. The availability of antiretroviral agents that are administered once daily and/or are associated with lower toxicity can help to simplify treatment regimens and avoid certain side effects, thereby facilitating greater adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy.