Patient Compliance with Cleft Palate Team Regimens

¹ Speech Pathology and Audiology University of Nevada School of Medicine
² Department of Speech Communication North Carolina State University
³ Allen, TX

A cleft palate team's prescribed regimen requires prompt and continued compliance in order to meet the management objectives and to justify the large investment of professional time. The purposes of this clinical investigation were to determine the rate of compliance with the recommendations made by a cleft palate team for its patients and to identify variables associated with compliance. A subject was defined as the person(s) who could best respond to questions concerning the management of the team's patient. Each subject was interviewed using a questionnaire. The mean patient compliance rate was 64.4%, and noncompliance with specific recommendations ranged from 12.5% to 100%. Using Jones and Caldwell's (1981) classification, 17.1% of the patients were classified as compliers, 78% as partial compliers, and 4.9% as noncompliers. The best predictor of compliance was a set of nine variables.

Key Words: patient compliance • cleft palate team • recommendations

Submitted on May 10, 1989
Accepted on March 2, 1990