Understanding treatment burden in adults with multimorbidity in the Singapore primary care setting: An exploratory study using the Multimorbidity Treatment Burden Questionnaire

Abstract

Patients with multimorbidity often undertake several tasks to manage their health. These include learning about their conditions, taking medications correctly, implementing lifestyle changes, etc., which can be overwhelming and burdensome.1 Their perceptions of the effort required to manage their health conditions and its impact on their general well-being are known as treatment burden.1 Although treatment burden is often overlooked by healthcare providers, there is growing recognition of its negative effects on medical adherence, quality of life and wasted healthcare resources.1,2 Dobbler et al.1 and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines3 have suggested incorporating treatment burden into the clinical practice guidelines recommendations to better inform clinicians of the associated benefits and burden.