Domiciliary Care Staff

An agreement should be made with the patient on how their medicines should be stored and disposed of. Encourage the patient to take responsibility for this, if they agree and are able to, with support from family members, or informal carers (if needed). This should be clearly recorded in their care plan. This should be reviewed at intervals appropriate for the patient. This is particularly important where a person has declining or fluctuating mental capacity.

Storage arrangements will vary between patients, if you are unsure of the storage arrangements for an individual patient check their care plan. If it is not clear in their care plan seek advice from your manager or designated senior.

If you store medicines, your company policy and processes should cover safe and appropriate access. This could consider:

When social care providers are responsible for storing a person's medicines, they should have robust processes to ensure there is safe access to medicines. These should include:

What conditions should we be thinking about when storing medicines to keep them safe for use and fit for purpose?

There are acts and regulations which control the availability of drugs that are considered sufficiently dangerous or otherwise harmful, with the potential for diversion and misuse. These drugs are termed CDs (controlled drugs). The act controls the export, import, supply and possession of dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs.