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Purpose: Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruptions it brought, medication adherence was already a challenging and complex health behavior. The purpose of this study was to describe patients' interactions in clinic, pharmacy, and home contexts and associated medication management and adherence during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients and Methods: A survey questionnaire was developed using the Medication Adherence Context and Outcomes framework and distributed via social media between May and July 2020 targeting adults taking a daily prescribed medication. Survey questions assessed sociodemographics, interactions with healthcare providers, clinics, pharmacies, medication management experiences, habit strength, and life chaos perceptions during the pandemic. Medication adherence was assessed by the self-report BAASIS© scale to measure implementation, discontinuation, and overall nonadherence. Results: A total of 134 adults from the United States, mean age 50.0 (SD 16.1) years were included in this analysis. Respondents took a median of 3.50 (interquartile range 4) daily medications. Delays in seeing a provider were reported by 47 (35.1%). Pharmacy encounters were impacted; 25 (18.7%) indicated their method for obtaining medication changed. Medication nonadherence was reported among 62 (46.3%) and was significantly greater among those who delayed prescription refills (p=0.032), pillbox users (p=0.047), and those who experienced greater life chaos (p=0.040) and lower habit strength (p< 0.001) in the early phase of the pandemic. Conclusion: Although the early phase of the pandemic affected access to care for nearly one-third of the sample, distance-accessible care options and strategies to obtain needed services without being in-person supported respondents medication management. Helpful strategies included provider accessibility, telehealth, home delivery/mail-order, drive-thru's, 90-day supplies, and online/automatic refills. Methods to develop and reestablish habits are critical. Care providers in clinic and pharmacy settings can educate and remind patients about services like distance-accessible technologies and online ordering of medications and establishing routines to support medication adherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor medication adherence is a significant problem, yet interventions to improve it have been largely ineffective. Existing ecological models indicate that adherence is multi-dimensional; however, they do not reflect understanding of context-specific processes and how they lead to adherence outcomes. A framework that reflects context-specific processes is important because it could be used to inform context-specific intervention delivery and measure associated adherence outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Medication Adherence Context and Outcomes (MACO) framework, which includes contexts (ie, clinics, pharmacies, and home) and context-specific processes (ie, shared decision-making, prescription filling strategies, home medication management) that lead to adherence outcomes (initiation, implementation, discontinuation, and persistence). The Medication and Adherence Contexts and Outcomes (MACO) framework was iteratively developed between 2015 and 2018 based on theory, practice, and research and combining patient experience journey mapping to chronologically describe the environmental contexts and actions (processes) that occur within the contexts and how they contribute to medication adherence as outcome. The three distinct yet interrelated contexts described in the MACO framework are 1) clinical encounters, 2) pharmacy encounters, and 3) day-to-day home management. Within these contexts are specific medication management actions that occur (processes) in order to produce adherence-related outcomes (initiation, implementation, and discontinuation/persistence). The MACO framework distinguishes context-specific processes and outcomes. The MACO framework may be useful to understand at which point(s) along the continuum people experience problems with managing medications. This understanding is potentially useful for developing and delivering context-specific interventions that are based on processes that underlie nonadherence and selecting adherence measures appropriate for the contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Medication nonadherence is a significant and multidimensional problem contributing to an increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Inconveniences in pharmacy and home contexts may increase nonadherence. This research examined inconveniences in pharmacy and home contexts associated with self-reported nonadherence, controlling for demographic and medication-taking covariates. Methods: Data from 4682 individuals who reported self-managing medications in an online marketing survey between October and December 2017 were analyzed in this secondary analysis. Nonadherence was dichotomized using a single question about likelihood to take medications as prescribed (adherence=always; nonadherence=most of the time, some of the time, never). Multivariable logistic regression with backwards elimination was used to examine the pharmacy (use of home delivery, number prescriptions picked up and visits to pharmacy) and home context (method used to organize/manage medications, satisfaction, and bother with management) variables and the demographic (age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, income, insurance) and medication (number of oral medications, medication changes and frequency of taking) covariates associated with nonadherence. Results: Overall, 25.8% of the responses indicated nonadherence. Nonadherence was more likely for individuals making fewer separate pharmacy trips (OR 0.98; 95% CI 0.97– 0.99); picking up fewer prescriptions (OR 0.96; 95% CI 0.93– 0.99); never, rarely or sometimes using mail order compared with always (OR 1.71; 95% CI 1.30– 2.26); not satisfied with managing medications (OR 2.13; 95% CI 1.42– 3.19); and using pill pouches and being bothered by them (OR 8.28; 95% CI 1.83– 37.31). Using pill pouches or a pillbox and not being bothered by them significantly decreased nonadherence likelihood. Younger and female respondents and those reporting medication changes in the last year were also more likely to report nonadherence. Conclusion: Though reasons for nonadherence are multidimensional, this study suggests that inconveniences in both the pharmacy and home context are important. Improving adherence requires addressing issues of inconvenience across the care continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hospitals are challenged to improve hospital transitions to home and are held accountable through public reporting. Design: This cross-sectional study used patients’ self-reported experience data from the publicly reported Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey to describe correlates of medication understanding at hospital discharge, using data collected from adult patients discharged from one Midwestern community hospital (N=154). Results: The final logistic regression model included four correlates of medication understanding: 1) nurse always communicates well, 2) physician always communicates well, 3) new prescriptions during hospital stay, and 4) very good or better mental health, and these classified 72.6% of the cases. Significant correlates of the patient strongly agreeing that they understood discharge medications were the “nurse always communicates well” (odds ratio =3.10, 95% confidence interval: 1.25, 7.66) and “very good or better self-perceived mental health” (odds ratio =2.17, 95% confidence interval: 1.02, 4.64). Conclusion: HCAHPS data can be used to model correlates of medication understanding, which are then useful for evaluating intervention effects following quality improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This review is intended to 1) describe the construct of immediacy by analyzing how immediacy is used in social relational research and 2) discuss how immediacy behaviors can be incorporated into patient-provider interventions aimed at supporting patients' medication management. Methods: A literature search was conducted using Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Google Scholar, OVID, PubMed, and Education Resource Information Center (ERIC) EBSCO with the keyword "immediacy". The literature was reviewed and used to describe historical conceptualizations, identify attributes, examine boundaries, and identify antecedents and consequences of immediacy. Results: In total, 149 articles were reviewed, and six attributes of immediacy were identified. Immediacy is 1) reciprocal in nature and 2) reflected in the communicator's attitude toward the receiver and the message, 3) conveys approachability, 4) respectfulness, 5) and connectedness between communicators, and 6) promotes receiver engagement. Immediacy is associated with affective learning, cognitive learning, greater recall, enhanced relationships, satisfaction, motivation, sharing, and perceptions of mutual value in social relationships. Conclusion: Immediacy should be further investigated as an intervention component of patient- provider relationships and shared decision making in medication management. Practice implications: In behavioral interventions involving relational interactions between interveners and participants, such as in medication management, the effects of communication behaviors and immediacy during intervention delivery should be investigated as an intervention component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study evaluated the feasibility of developing linguistically tailored educational messages designed to match the linguistic styles of patients segmented into types with the Descriptor™, and to determine patient preferences for tailored or standard messages based on their segments. Patients and methods: Twenty patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) were recruited from a diabetes health clinic. Participants were segmented using the Descriptor™, a language-based questionnaire, to identify patient types based on their control orientation (internal/external), agency (high/low), and affect (positive/negative), which are well studied constructs related to T2DM self-management. Two of the seven self-care behaviors described by the American Association of Diabetes Educators (healthy eating and taking medication) were used to develop standard messages and then linguistically tailored using features of the six different construct segment types of the Descriptor™. A subset of seven participants each provided feedback on their preference for standard or linguistically tailored messages; 12 comparisons between standard and tailored messages were made. Results: Overall, the tailored messages were preferred to the standard messages. When the messages were matched to specific construct segment types, the tailored messages were preferred over the standard messages, although this was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Linguistically tailoring messages based on construct segments is feasible. Furthermore, tailored messages were more often preferred over standard messages. This study provides some preliminary evidence for tailoring messages based on the linguistic features of control orientation, agency, and affect. The messages developed in this study should be tested in a larger more representative sample. The present study did not explore whether tailored messages were better understood. This research will serve as preliminary evidence to develop future studies with the ultimate goal to design intervention studies to investigate if linguistically tailoring communication within the context of patient education influences patient knowledge, motivation, and activation toward making healthy behavior changes in T2DM self-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]