Providing personalised care through the effective use of medicines

Essential Standard 9A. People who use services receive care, treatment and support that:
Ensures the medicines given are appropriate and person-centred by taking account of their:

*age
*choices
*lifestyle
*cultural and religious beliefs
*allergies and intolerances
*existing medical conditions and prescriptions
*adverse drug reactions
*recommended prescribing regimes.

Ensures the person's prescription for medicines, for which the service is responsible, is up to date and is reviewed and changed as their needs or condition changes.
Includes monitoring the effect of their medicines and action when necessary if their condition changes including side effects and adverse reactions.
Includes supporting and reminding them to self-administer their medicines independently where they are able and wish to do so by minimising the risk of incorrect administration.
Follows clear procedures in practice, which are monitored and reviewed, which explain how up-to-date medicines information and clinical reference sources for staff are made available.

My thoughts:-

Does the person who does the care needs assessment have medicines training to ensure that all of these things are taken in to consideration?
In my experience specialising in medicines in care the answer to that question is more often than not a resounding NO! That is usually reflecting in the care plan produced, giving providers little information about medication, it's use, personalisation, promoting independence, allergies etc. Quality training for assessors in Medication Needs Assessment is essential to ensure that our assessors know exactly what information is required to gather from the client AND to give to the client.

A community or primary care trust pharmacist can help support you with medicines use reviews - a free service that would provide you with so much information and and advice - make sure you take advantage of it!

Promoting independence with medicines is a subject dear to my heart as many of you who have trained with me will know. There are so many wonderful compliance aids available to enable clients to take or use their medication more easily and yet the care industry seem to have missed out on this information. I'll make sure this appears again in later newsletters to empower you to enable your service users too.

Clinical reference sources and medicines information can be found in the BNF or go to www.BNF.org and use the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain's publication The Safe Handling of Medicines in Social Care

Next week we'll cover Standard 9b - Manage risk through effective procedures about medicines handling. Hope you're finding this useful :-)