Edinburgh Napier University

  Aim
To report an analysis of the concept of concordance.

Background
Adherence-based medicines interventions are known to be of limited success. Concordance appears to offer an alternative approach consistent with person-centred approaches to decision-making. However, the application of the principle of concordance appears inconsistent. This article considers the extent to which any of this confusion may be a function of the different usage of the term concordance in the disciplines of nursing, general medicine, psychiatry and pharmacy.

Design
Rodger's evolutionary method of concept analysis.

Data sources
CINAHL, Medline, PsychINFO, Cochrane library, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection were searched for publications between 2000 and 2012 with combinations of key words including concord*, adherence, compliance, medic*, psychiatr*, pharm*, nurs*.

Review methods
Rodgers' evolutionary analytic method was used to identify and explore the concept of concordance across healthcare disciplines. A representative sample of papers was identified from the source disciplines. Over 500 papers were identified. Exclusion criteria limited the final sample to 60 papers in total, entailing 15 per discipline. Each discipline's papers were analysed for references, antecedents, consequences, attributes and surrogates separately. The team then worked together to cross-check these interpretations.

Results
There was minimal agreement between the disciplines suggesting each discipline practised a different conceptualization of concordance. The main point of agreement was that better research is required to articulate the scope and value of partnership working.

Conclusion
The results clarified a distinct and currently missing research agenda.