Article Critique - Adherence to ocular hypotensive therapy: Patient health education needs and views on group education
This paper evaluates a medical journal article entitled, “Adherence to ocular hypotensive therapy: Patient health education needs and views on group education,” by Waterman et.al. published on the Journal of Patient Preference and Adherence, Volume 7, pages 55-63, 2013. While the title is apparent to the clinicians on the topic that the article is looking at, it may be slightly challenging for the general public to understand the term "ocular hypotensive therapy" in the title as it was not explained anywhere in the article. The term may be phrased in a more understandable manner such as "therapy to reduce eye pressure" or "glaucoma therapy" as this article is from an open access medical journal focusing on patient preference and adherence, the general public who are interested in this topic will have access to it and they intend to understand and get useful information from the article. Therefore, the title should be as clear as possible to stimulate the interest of not only the clinicians but also the general public to encourage them to read. Nonetheless, after reading the article, the title is considered as precise and concise in reflecting the content of the work. As the title of the article suggests, the main issue discussed in the article was that as in other long-term conditions, there is a tendency in patients with glaucoma did not adhere to their prescribed medications (WHO, 2003) and it had been shown that the extent to which patients continue to take eye drops as prescribed without discontinuation was poor (Olthoff et al, 2005). Therefore, the abstract of the article indicated that the purpose of this article is "to understand the health education needs of patients with glaucoma, particularly with regards to adherence to glaucoma