What is 'medicines management' in hospital pharmacies?

[sheilacheetah]

Hi all.
I am about to go for my first interview for a hospital technician's job, after several years working in community. The job is rotational, and one of the sectors is medicines management. I gather this is to do with patients bringing their own meds into hospital with them, but how exactly does it work? Do they just use their own meds for the whole stay? What if they forget to bring them? What are the advantages/ disadvantages? What other roles would a technician in this sector do? Is this related to the 'MyMedicines' forms we sometimes get sent when our regular patients are discharged from hospital, listing all their medications?
I am specifically asking about this because I feel it is the sector I can maybe closest relate to my community experience (patient contact, chatting about their meds etc). Would you agree?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[Nik]

I gather this is to do with patients bringing their own meds into hospital with them, but how exactly does it work? Do they just use their own meds for the whole stay?

This is partly right and does happen in some hospitals, but not all hospitals have patients' own drugs schemes - even where schemes are run, the drugs have to be checked to ensure they are safe to use, within expiry date etc. When I did a placement last summer, techs at the hospital were quite involved in this and techs are increasingly being used to carry out medicines reconciliation when patients are admitted to hospital.
A spoonful of sugar is as good a place as any to get to grips with medicines management:

http://195.11.203.89/SiteCollectionD...onfulsugar.pdf

Also this doc is worth a read:

http://www.npci.org.uk/medicines_man...gement_web.pdf

I wouldn't suggest reading the whole lot but there is a section on med management in hospitals.
Best of luck for the interview.

[bleepholder]

hi,

yes your right in the fact that patients use their own medicines in hospital. as a technician you would check their emds for suitability as mentioned above, expiry etc. if they forget to rbing them in then we just use ward stock or get a supply from pharmacy. the advantage of them using their own is that if the ward doesn't stock a paticular drug (not all wards stock all drugs) then there will be no delay in obtaining a supply from pharmacy! quite important if the drugs are for epilepsy or parkinsons disease!

other roles you could be involved in at ward level may include taking drug histories from patients newly admitted to the ward, ordering supplies for patients after its all been screened by a pharmacist, offering advice to ward staff regarding medication and administration of drugs.

Other medicines management issues could be counselling patients on discharge, sorting out their prescriptions ready to go home, and ensuring they have all the necessary and correct medication.

Spoonful of sugar is good palce to start with regards to medicines reconciliation but is quite outdated. if you go onto the DofH website and search for white papers pharmacy, there will be mroe up to date papers talking about pharmacy and how its changing!

hope that helps and good luck

[sheilacheetah]

Thanks guys for your help. Fingers crossed for my interview!