Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) are likely to experience secondary conditions after their injury. In order to manage these conditions, persons with SCI are often taking multiple medications. Taking multiple medications can not only be challenging, but also cause harm. Currently, there are limited supports and a lack of tools to assist with the self-management of medication for this population. Therefore, a toolkit intervention that helps with medication self-management for persons with SCI will be co-developed. A mixed methods study using a concept mapping approach was conducted. Concept mapping is highly participatory and involves three key steps: brainstorming, sorting and rating, and mapping. In the brainstorming sessions, adults with SCI, caregivers, and healthcare providers generated ideas about what to include in the toolkit. These ideas were synthesized into a final list, where participants rated each on importance and feasibility and sorted them into similar groups. Visual maps there then created to display the data. Thirty-five participants took part in this study. Nearly 700 ideas were generated in the brainstorming sessions, which were synthesized to a final list of 79 statements. The visual map contained eight groups of statements related to the content to include in the toolkit: 1) information sharing and communication, 2) healthcare provider interactions and involvement, 3) peer and community connections, 4) supports and services for accessing medications and medication information, 5) information on non-prescription medications, 6) safety and lifestyle considerations, 7) general medication information, and 8) practical information and strategies related to medication-taking. With an advisory group, a preliminary version of the toolkit will be co-developed for revision and evaluation in subsequent phases. This work has the potential to improve the health and well-being of persons with SCI by enhancing their self-management of medications.