(HealthDayNews) -- "Take this medication exactly as prescribed."
That sort of warning accompanies most prescriptions, but it seems that even doctors themselves ignore it some of the time.
According to the Southern Medical Journal, doctors are more compliant than the average patient. But they're still not perfect.
Researchers at New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y., surveyed 301 physicians and nurses on the way they comply with instructions on taking medication.
For short-term drugs like antibiotics, the adherence rate was about 77 percent. And for long-term medications, such as those for high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the rate was 84 percent.
Older physicians and nurses are better at taking medications than younger ones, and everyone fares better with medications that require one or two doses a day than with drugs that need three or four daily doses, the survey found.
