Predictors of patient medication compliance on the day of surgery and the effects of providing patients with standardized yet simplified medication instructions.

Background: Anesthesiologists are responsible for optimizing patients' preoperative medications, including maximizing their compliance with preoperative medication instructions. The authors hypothesized that a standardized, simplified instruction sheet presented and verbally reinforced during the preanesthesia clinic visit would improve patient medication compliance on the day of surgery.

Methods: An unmatched case-control design was applied, with nonrandomized, preintervention (controls) and postintervention (cases) data collected.