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Paper long abstract:

In recent years Western societies have undergone remarkable demographic changes. Life expectancy and average age of the populations have increased and several studies have focused on the ways in which elderly people try to manage their conditions outside healthcare institutions. In this paper we will focus on a particular category of elderly people, patients with complex medication schemes, analyzing care practices and formal-informal relations through which complex therapies are managed. The materials presented originate from AETAS, a two-years research project conducted in the Province of Trento (North-East Italy). Taking the cue from 45 in depth interviews addressed to elderly people with multiple health problems (and with their caregivers), we will focus on:

• home as the space of "therapy in the wild", where expert knowledge and practices of health care organizations melts into and cope with mundane knowledge and practices;

• the role played by medications and health technologies in the configuration of care practices enacted by patients and their caregivers outside institutional boundaries. For example, we will show how General Practitioners try to configure patients and their caregivers as users able to manage the therapy autonomously, advising them on how to arrange the domestic setting and the therapy tools within it (i.e. blisters in the cupboard and scale in the bathroom, etc.).

The core contribution will be to highlight the ways in which medicines, medical practice and mundane arrangements connect everyday life routines with therapy management practices.