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Medsrec

Satisfactory Essays

As defined by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI 2015) and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE 2015), medicines reconciliation (medsrec) ‘is the process of identifying an accurate list of a person's current medicines and comparing them with the current list in use, recognising any discrepancies, and documenting any changes, thereby resulting in a complete list of medicines, accurately communicated’. It has been shown on many occasions that uncorrected discrepancies during medsrec contributes to medication errors on discharge. As a result, medsrec is now a compulsory process and forms part of the discharge planning in compliance with NICE, Department of Health (DoH), RPS and local policies. NICE guideline (NG5) …show more content…

(2013), supports this as they indicated that 50% of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are avoidable with appropriate medsrec. Their study found that up to three professionals from two disciplines were involved in the medicines reconciliation process including doctors, pharmacists and nurses, with geriatric medsrec taking most of the time. The research used a time and study motion design for its methodology which should have served as an advantage as staff were being monitored under normal working conditions but this was not so as staff were consciously under or over performing when they were being timed. This variation in performance levels was influenced by their attitudes towards the goal of the research as under or over performance by staff was purely based on staff wanting researchers to assume and think that the medsrec process was done appropriately or not at the right time. In addition to this, the study was limited to the normal working hours of the hospitals and omitted weekends, nights and evenings to show medsrec being done in ideal staffing conditions. The result could have been different during outside of the normal working hours of the hospitals due to different working conditions such as the availability of staff involved in the medrec process, for example, pharmacists and Fy1/Fy2 doctors. This will be the focus of my own study as the medsrec process may be different during out of pharmacy hours. On the other hand, one advantage of the study is in the direct and continuous observations of staff which gave the researchers insight into the roles and responsibilities of different healthcare professionals (HCPs) involved in the medsrec and discharge process. This will provide a benchmark to the effectiveness of the discharge process and give room for improvements where

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