Adherence and medication instructions. Review and recommendations.

Prescription medication nonadherence among the elderly is a serious medical problem. Nonadherence is primarily caused by poor communication between health professionals and elderly patients. More specifically, nonadherence often reflects the inability of patients to understand and remember their medication instructions. Therefore, adherence can be increased by designing instructions that enable elders to easily construct a clear and simple mental model of how to take their medication. Inexpensive microcomputer-based hardware and software makes it possible for pharmacists to provide elderly patients with effective instructions.