Older adults often strive to maintain an independent lifestyle. However, in order to live independently in the community, it is necessary that older adults are able to take responsibility for their own health-related tasks including medication management and health-related appointments. Successfully managing these health-related tasks requires the use of prospective memory (PM), yet the research documenting the specific PM tasks people encounter when managing health-related tasks is scant. The current paper describes a focus group study aimed at identifying PM tasks that older adults must remember and those they forget, as well as an examination into the current strategies used to assist with managing medications and health-related appointments.
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