Abstract
Effective communication between patients and their healthcare providers is essential to positive health outcomes. Older adults may be at a disadvantage during communication exchanges due to age-related sensory declines and cognitive changes. Understanding the role of these age-related changes may lead to interventions that will ameliorate the disadvantages older adults face in the health communication process. Twenty-four older adults were interviewed to obtain an understanding of the difficulties older adults face during health communication. The findings suggest that older adults do have health communication problems. They are, however, able to generate strategies to solve these problems when problems are presented in hypothetical scenarios. Based on the findings, a brochure was developed to provide strategies and guidelines to help anticipate and resolve health communication problems.
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