Care home staff failing to administer drugs to patients appropriately
Some care home managers are failing to ensure that staff use basic training given by community pharmacists in how to administer medicines to patients. This is according to the head pharmacist, Hazel Sommerville, at the Commission for Social Care Inspection following its damning report
into medicines management in care homes published this week. The problem
is compounded by the decision by some primary care trusts to move away
from contracting community pharmacists to give advice on medicines
management to care homes, preferring to commission medicine use reviews
instead, said Mrs Sommerville.
Her comments following the disturbing report by the CSCI that revealed
that half of all care and nursing homes in England are failing to meet
minimum national standards in medicines management. People are often
given the wrong medicine, somebody else’s medicines, medicine in
the wrong dose or no medicine at all, it said. Medication records were
not being kept and staff were poorly trained or not trained at all, the
inspectors found.
The report comes nearly two years after similar conclusions were reached
about the standards and provision of medicines management in care and
nursing homes by the CSCI’s predecessor, the National Care Standards
Commission.
Mrs Sommerville said: “ There has been a reduction in the number
of community pharmacists providing advice to care homes over the past
few years as PCTs and the medicines management services collaborative
have replaced contracts for advice with those for medicines reviews.” She
added that some pharmacists are being contracted by their PCT to train
care home staff in basic medicines management skills but the care home
managers are then failing to follow this up.
She said: “The pharmacists can give the training but what they
can’t do is wander around the homes to ensure that staff are acting
on the training. A care home manager who has been told that a pharmacist
will train staff, may assume that the home’s training responsibility
has been met. Some care homes are failing to follow through and they
must acknowledge that.”
David Pruce, director of practice and quality improvement at the Royal
Pharmaceutical Society, said it was PCTs’ responsibility to ensure
that patients in care homes received appropriate medicines advice and
support. He said: “This is not the responsibility of pharmacists
and it is very clear from this report that advice from community pharmacists
is not universal.” |
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