Improving information transfer from hospital to primary care
By Anthony Young, MRPharmS, MSc
|
When patients are discharged from hospital, medicines-related
information is often not effectively communicated to general practitioners.
This article describes how a pharmacy-generated electronic discharge
letter could help alleviate this problem, thereby reducing risk to
patients |
This article as a PDF (80K) |
Anthony
Young is
medicines management pharmacist for older people at the Queen Elizabeth
Hospital, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear
|
Risk to elderly patients is reduced by better discharge information |
SUMMARY
One of the good practice requirements set out in the National Service Framework
for Older People is to improve the quality of the medicines information supplied
to general practitioners and their staff when a patient is discharged from
hospital. Such a requirement is pertinent, given that a considerable body of
research has shown that there are medicines-related deficiencies in the hospital
discharge process. For example, one study reported that only five of 130 discharge
letters (covering 496 drugs in total) received by GPs contained any details
of drug regimen changes.
With the NSF in mind, pharmacy staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead,
decided to produce an electronic discharge letter containing medicines information
in a clear and concise format. This would be sent out as patients are discharged
from the Jubilee wing, a 96-bed elderly rehabilitation unit attached to the
hospital.
In order to determine whether the use of such a letter reduced risk to patients
pharmacy staff designed a study to:
· Survey end-users, using a questionnaire that included a question about
risk perception
· Compare the incidences of medicines errors in the GP prescriptions for
patients whose discharge was
accompanied by an electronic letter (study group), with those whose
discharge was not (control group)
· Compare readmissions in the study and control groups |
Hospital
Pharmacist