MEDICATION
Dispensed to Your Door
As recent research has reported, medication errors are a serious problem within the UK
and one which is placing considerable strain on the NHS. Here,
PillTime.co.uk explains
how its service has been designed to combat this problem.
Looking after elderly and ill patients can be a demanding and tough job that brings practical, financial and emotional challenges. Patients who live at home are often given the wrong drugs, overdoses or no drugs at all, meaning life- threatening errors are unwittingly being made by carers and relatives.
A recent study from the London School of Economics, Imperial College London and Oxford University examined research databases for home drug blunders and found that over 90% of carers looking after people at home make potentially deadly errors with their medicines. Experts fear that thousands are being put in danger because drug administration at home is rarely monitored, potentially becoming a serious patient safety issue and another demand on the NHS.
Those suffering from chronic health conditions, such as high blood pressure, dementia and raised cholesterol take a cocktail of medicines each day. Patients struggle with the number of pills they have to take and their prescription instructions and mistakes are regularly made by patients, paid care workers and people looking aſter their own relatives.
With an ageing population, it is feared that the risk of serious life-threatening errors will increase. More people will require medication for long-term conditions and the responsibility for helping those patients manage their drugs will frequently fall on older carers, who will oſten have their own medications to deal with as well.
Already, over 50% of patients themselves are non- compliant with medication and this percentage increases with both age and the number of medicines prescribed. People not taking medicines as prescribed is estimated to cost the NHS £500 million every year (in addition to the enormous annual cost of wasted medication which stands at around £300million).
When medication management goes wrong, particularly with older people, the effect can be devastating for everyone involved. Elderly people can fail to get the benefit from what they take, endure side effects, may end up in hospital as a result and tragically, in some cases, die.
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www.tomorrowscare.co.uk
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