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- Title
Managing Multiple Medications and Their Packaging for Older People in Home Care Nursing: An Interview Study.
- Authors
Carli Lorenzini, Giana
- Abstract
Home care nurses assist older people in their daily living and well-being, including medication management. Medication management can be challenging for older people with functional constraints and several chronic conditions. This paper presents how home care nurses manage medications and their packaging for older people at their homes. This study followed an explorative qualitative research design, in which semi-structured interviews were conducted with home care nurses in Sweden (n = 14). The study revealed that home care nurses need to coordinate a multitude of interrelated tasks, with documentation being paramount. Regarding medication management, automated systems were preferred, as they reduce medication errors and facilitate dispensing of medications for each patient when compared with analogue systems still in use (i.e., dosing boxes), commonly used by older people. Importantly, the lack of a common journal system for updates on prescribed medication among health care providers and analogue communication still in place creates space for outdated prescription of medications for patients. There are opportunities for further investigation on how technology can help home care nurses in coordinating medication management tasks with other health care providers, and on receiving updates about medication intake by older patients when the nurse is not at their homes.
- Subjects
SWEDEN; HOME care of older people; HOME nursing; OLDER patients; MEDICAL personnel; FRAIL elderly; MEDICATION therapy management; OLD age homes
- Publication
Healthcare (2227-9032), 2021, Vol 9, Issue 10, p1265
- ISSN
2227-9032
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/healthcare9101265