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Health Literacy and Medication Adherence Among Older Community Dwelling Adults

Research has shown us that very often, people do not take medication as prescribed by their doctor. The term adherence describes the extent to which the patient’s behaviour of taking medication matches agreed recommendations from the prescriber. The inclusion of the word ‘agreed’ denotes the importance of including patients in decisions about their medications. One of the reasons that has been identified as to why patients don’t take their medicines is because many people don’t understand their medicines i.e. why they are taking the medicine, how to take the medicine etc. The term Health Literacy (HL) describes the ability to apply reading, listening, analytical, and decision-making skills to health situations. Research has shown that patients with limited HL tend to have less health knowledge, worse self-management skills, lower use of preventative services, higher hospitalisation rates, worse self-rated health and higher rates of mortality. Therefore, it is very important that HL is taken into consideration when medication adherence may be an issue. The issues of medication adherence and HL can affect patients of all ages, however our study is seeking to find out more information about these issues among a particularly vulnerable patient group, the older person. The more we understand about these issues, the more we can do to find ways to overcome these issues and promote better medicines use.