Abstract
Worldwide, the population is aging and this trend will increase in the future due to medical, technological and scientific advancements. To take care of the elderly is highly demanding and challenging for the health care system due to their frequent condition of chronicity, multimorbidity and the consequent complex management of polypharmacy. Nonadherence to medications and to medical plans is a well-recognized public health problem and a very urgent issue in this population. For this reason, some considerations to identify a new shared approach to integrated care of older people are described. The concept of adherence should be considered as a complex and continuous process where family, caregivers and patients’ beliefs come into play. Moreover, a new culture of adherence should contemplate the complexity of multimorbidity, as well as the necessity to renegotiate the medication regimen on the basis of each patient’s needs.
Disclosure
A Giardini, P Kardas and E Costa are coordinators (AG and EC) or promoters (PK) of Action Group A1 “Prescription and adherence to treatment” of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, and partners of the Erasmus plus project Skills4Adherence (2017-1-PL01-KA202-038672). The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.