Development and Testing of an Occupational Therapy Intervention to Promote Medication Adherence

Abstract

Many persons with chronic health conditions fail to take their medications as prescribed, resulting in declines in health and function. Unfortunately, current interventions for medication nonadherence are not very effective. Medication adherence is a daily activity, which many occupational therapists believe would be responsive to occupational therapy intervention. Unfortunately, few resources support occupational therapists in this role. The purpose of this dissertation is to create the foundational work for occupational therapy medication adherence interventions. In this dissertation, I accomplish five objectives. First, I identify the role of occupational therapy practitioners in the medication adherence field. Second, I create a manualized occupational therapy intervention for medication adherence named the Integrative Medication Self-Management Intervention (or IMedS). Third, I develop a training program to teach the IMedS intervention to entry-level practitioners. Fourth, I investigate the preliminary effectiveness of this intervention in a small two-group experimental blind pre-post randomized controlled trial. Finally, I explore the feasibility of continued research for the IMedS intervention. Findings from this study support occupational therapy’s role in medication adherence intervention and future research in this area.