FASHION HEALTH & BEAUTY
Making your medicines
safer for you
Patients requiring changes to their
medication whilst under the care of a
hospital specialist have recently seen a
difference in the way their medicines
are managed and prescribed.
The Hospital Specialist will no
longer give a new prescription during
a patient’s consultation or following
a hospital stay. Instead, a summary
of any recommended changes to
medication will be sent to the patient’s
GP for them to consider and make
the necessary changes to their regular
prescription, ready for the next usual
collection time.
The summary - pink copy - will also
be made available to the patient so
they can see exactly what has been
recommended and will be a useful
checklist for carers and for community
pharmacies to help patients with the
changes. Patients will be able to go
straight home after their appointment
without the extra wait for medicines
that are not needed urgently.
The change in the way medication
is prescribed following a hospital
consultation will enable a more timely
and appropriate way of updating
medication following specialist advice.
It will allow GPs and community
pharmacists to make all of the
necessary checks into ongoing and past
medicines, for safety and better health,
ensuring that the medicines that
are to be stopped or doses changed
are finished before starting the new
medicines.
Gillian Honeywell, Chief
Pharmacist at St. Mary’s Hospital,
said: “The hospital pharmacy has
traditionally been supplying all new
or changed medicines straight after
the consultation. This gives our
patients no time to digest all of the
information that they have been given
by the consultant and the hospital
pharmacist. With little or no written
information to help them this can be
confusing and sometimes worrying for
them.
“We will now make sure that
medicines which need to stop
being taken can be finished
first. This will improve
safety by removing the risk
of taking the new and
old medicines together
and reduce waste.
Also, some of the
medicines dispensed
by the hospital
pharmacy look very
different from those
supplied by a community pharmacy,
even though they contain exactly the
same drug, which does concern many
of our patients.”
Gillian added: “We want to hear
from patients if the new system doesn’t
work for them or if they prefer the
new system. We are always looking for
ways to improve how we help patients
to get the most from their medicines
and the hospital pharmacy will still
be available to answer any questions
about changes to medicines, not just
about the ones that we dispense at St.
Mary’s.”
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