CPF FUNDED GRANT DETAILS

In the United States, over 52 million lay, or informal, caregivers provide care to adults with a disability or illness. Majority of older adults with long-term care needs live in the community with their informal caregivers and receive their medications from community pharmacies. However, informal caregivers often are unprepared to manage their care-recipients complex medication regimens, recognize complications, and coordinate care that frequently involves many different providers and services. In addition, informal caregivers themselves often have multiple chronic conditions and simultaneously manage multiple medications but will neglect their own health care needs in order to assist the care-recipient. MTM is designed to optimize therapeutic outcomes for individual patients, but interventions that increase appropriate medication use for patients with informal caregivers should target both members of the caregiving dyad - the informal caregiver and the care-recipient. The overall goal of this project is to interview community pharmacists through structured interviews and build a communication model for community pharmacists providing MTM services to older adult patients with informal caregivers so optimal medication use may be obtained. This project will serve as a foundation for enhancing the collaboration between patients, their caregivers and the community pharmacist.