Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Dr Eleanor Wilson (Nottingham Centre for the Advancement of Research in End of Life Care, School of Health Sciences, University of Nottingham Medical School, Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK) Managing medications at home can be a complex task involving ordering, collecting, organising, storing and taking medications correctly. Medication work must take place alongside ongoing management of household tasks, the physical and emotional labour of caring for someone who is dying and the impending loss of that person. Family caregivers are often assumed to be willing and able to take on the role of supporting patients to manage their medications at home, yet many are themselves older adults with serious health problems or adult children with many other conflicting roles and responsibilities. Knowledge of the ways that managing medications adds to the considerable burden of care and work that must be undertaken when someone is seriously ill and dying at home. Family caregivers are incre