Finding Meaning in Medication Management in Dementia

Most family caregivers assist with and worry about medication management tasks. Growdon and colleagues draw on the qualitative component of the Living Alone With Cognitive Impairment Project to explore how older adults living alone with cognitive impairment and their family members or friends (social contacts) manage medications. They use inductive-deductive thematic analysis to analyze longitudinal interview data from a large, diverse sample of 116 older adults and 54 social contacts. Their findings can inform the development of clinical and policy interventions to support medication management at the individual, interpersonal and/or relational, and system and/or policy levels. Through this qualitative research, Growdon and colleagues give voice to the often overlooked population of older adults living independently with dementia.