Assessing the distributed nature of home-based heart failure medication management in older adults

Abstract

Non-adherence to medications in older adult chronic heart failure (CHF) patients suggests the difficulty these patients experience with medication management tasks. This qualitative study explored home-based medication management and how activities were distributed across persons, artifacts, time and space using a distributed cognition framework. Interviews with CHF patients (N = 27) and their informal caregivers (N=11) were content analyzed for cross-cutting themes about distributed task performance. Results illustrated problem areas within this distributed system such as representational discordance, communication difficulties, and lack of portability of information across environments. Implications for future design of interventions include the need for portability and exchange of information, portability of medications and reminder devices, and improved communication across the distributed system.