Electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems and safe discharge

From the investigation: Electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems and safe discharge

Recommendation date:

Safety recommendation

It is recommended that NHS England and NHS Improvement include in the Medication Safety Programme shared decision making and improved patient access to medication information across all sectors of care, to ensure a person-centred approach to safe and effective medicines use.

Response:

We understand how important it is for professionals and patients to make shared decisions about medication. It reduces risk and helps make sure that medicines are used safely. In this way it supports all the other efforts that the Medicines Safety Improvement Programme is making to reduce errors. Our early work has built shared decision making into the programme in three ways:

  1. By backing patient led campaigns for better communication, such as ‘Me & My Medicines’, and ‘Choosing Wisely’, an initiative that takes into account what’s important to the patient as well as the clinician.
  2. By training pharmacists to improve their face to face communications with patients.
  3. By providing information for the public about how specific medicines work, how and when to take them, possible side effects and answers to common questions, on the NHS Medicines A-Z website.

Actions

As part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy and in response to the WHO 3rd Global Challenge – Medication without Harm, The Medicines Safety Improvement Programme has identified shared decision making and information for patients as key deliverables to improve patient and medicines safety.

Our early work here is focussed in three main areas:

  • Firstly supporting, with widespread communication, models of shared decision making such as ‘Choosing Wisely’ and ‘Me & My Medicines’.
  • Secondly, by collaborating with the National Clinical Director for Personalised Care, in delivering training for pharmacists in shared decision making as part of a larger programme.
  • Thirdly, the development of the NHS Medicines A-Z, led by NHS Digital, to provide web-based information relating to specific medicines written specifically for patients.

Response received on 13 January 2020.

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