Medicines safety responsibilities

On completion of this section you should have an understanding of:

Reporting and recording reactions to medicines
Medicines errors - Your responsibilities
Medicines errors - Reporting and learning from mistakes
Recording medicines support - A check list

Getting medicines administration right

When supporting or administering medicines you should always follow the 6 r’s of medicines administration.

Reporting and recording reactions to medicines (side effects)

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help

It’s an important part of medicines safety to watch for and report any side effects (often called reactions) a person experiences with their medicines.

If you notice any change to the person’s health or wellbeing or they report any problems, you must inform your manager/supervisor/appropriate healthcare professional and record on the appropriate documentation.

Click on the images below to reveal some common reactions (side effects to medicines).

An adverse drug reaction (ADR) is an unwanted or harmful reaction which occurs after administration of a drug or drugs. They can occur when a medicine is used within or outside its approved use. Report ADRs through the yellow card scheme.

For more information please visit Medicines information for adult social care services guide – 'Reporting medicine related incidents'

Medicines errors - your responsibilities

If you make an error what happens next?

You must take action to prevent any potential harm to the person and report as soon as possible to the appropriate person following local procedures and document your actions for an accurate record of what happened.

Safety

Don’t hide it or try to cover it up
Think about the person's safety and what harm could come to them

Report

Take immediate action to prevent harm to the person
Report immediately to your manager
Record the error on the MAR/organisational documents

Process

Further action will be taken by the appropriate person such as:

Getting advice from health professionals
Informing the person/family/carer
Reporting the incident to regulatory authorities

Record

Use your organisation's documentation
Follow organisational procedures and processes

Medicines errors – reporting and learning from mistakes

notes

help

Safety incidents with medicines must be investigated by the organisation to try and determine why it occurred and if it can be prevented in the future.

Some examples of medicines errors that might have caused the death of a person, severe harm, or even no harm might be:

Whatever happened, they still need to be recorded and reported, so that we can look at and learn from these incidents and try to prevent them happening again.

Medicines support - checklist

Here's a brief reminder:

Always complete records and leave no gaps on the MAR chart for regular medication. If a regular medication is not given use a MAR code to record why. (e.g R=refused)

What does ‘other’ code cover?

Use the appropriate documentation to record the reason in more detail.

Remember that spilt/spoilt medicines records need to be kept, so if you dropped a tablet on the floor, record it in the appropriate records. Click on grey circle to find out more.

Not following policies, laws and regulations

Click on each of the buttons below to find out what could happen when we don’t follow our medicines policies and processes:

Summary

you must always remember :

Section 5: Medicines safety responsibilities

In this section we have looked at:

Getting medicine administration right
Reporting and recording reactions to medicines
Medicines errors - Your responsibilities
Medicines errors - Reporting and learning from mistakes
Recording medicines support - A check list

This completes this module.

If you have completed all the other sections you can continue to the assessment otherwise go back to the contents page and complete other sections of this module prior to continuing to assessment section.

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