Communicating effects, producing compliance: pharmaceutical counseling and the language of therapeutic responsibility in Indonesian clinics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67490/ijml.v1i3.1048Keywords:
adherence communication, pharmaceutical counseling, side-effect framing, therapeutic responsibility, warning pragmaticsAbstract
Background: Pharmaceutical counseling in Indonesian clinics is increasingly central to medication safety, yet side-effect communication is often treated as technical information rather than as language that shapes patient responsibility and therapeutic compliance. Objective: This study examines how publicly available Indonesian pharmaceutical counseling materials frame side effects, produce compliance, and distribute therapeutic responsibility among patients, pharmacists, clinicians, and institutional texts. Method: Using qualitative discourse-pragmatic analysis, this study analysed 29 verified public and scholarly documents, with 16 primary counseling texts coded through side-effect framing, compliance pragmatics, and therapeutic responsibility mapping. Results: Side effects were most frequently framed through warning and risk consequence, especially in relation to antibiotics, tuberculosis therapy, hypertension medication, psychotropic drugs, and self-medication. Compliance was mainly produced through continuation directives, professional consultation instructions, monitoring obligations, dose discipline, and reassurance-supported guidance. Therapeutic responsibility was distributed across patient self-management, professional explanation, shared monitoring, and institutional medication information, although patient responsibility appeared most prominently. Implication: These findings suggest that improving adherence requires not only more counseling but also more accountable, comprehensible, and patient-sensitive ways of communicating uncertainty, risk, and continued treatment. Novelty: This study advances pharmaceutical communication research by repositioning adherence from a behavioural outcome to a discourse-pragmatic process through which side effects become obligations, warnings, and shared therapeutic duties.
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