Addressing Medication Adherence in Older Adults Living at Home: The Role of Occupational Therapy

“Drugs don’t work in patients who do not take them,” said U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Coop in 1985. This quote hits the core of an unfortunate truth in health care: Many clients do not take their prescribed medications. Medication non-adherence is defined as taking less than 80% of prescribed doses of a medication (Shruthi et al., 2016). As the number of prescribed medications increases and dosing becomes more complex, the likelihood of non-adherence to medication also increases