Medicine storage
responsibilities and therefore ease the pressure on busy care home staff.
Reduced medicines waste NHS statistics on pharmaceutical waste in the UK make for sobering reading. An estimated £300m of NHS prescribed medicines are wasted each year. The NHS estimates that approximately
£50m worth of NHS supplied medicines are disposed of each year by care homes. This accounts for 17 per cent of the total prescription medicine wastage in England each year.
This situation is unlikely to improve as an increasingly aging and infirm population is only likely to swell the population of nursing homes and, by logical implication, increase the amount of wasted medicines generated in the care home sector. With the health and care sector arguably under pressure like never before, the need to use every means possible to reduce costly medicines waste becomes everybody’s responsibility. A medical refrigerator is clearly
not a silver bullet. However, it can play some significant part in preventing pharmaceutical waste. Consider just the total value of vaccines – which cost the NHS and estimated £200m a year (equating to an additional £6m a year for Northern Ireland).
Ensure that these highly sensitive
medical products are not damaged simply through inadequate refrigerated storage, and the collective saving is obvious.
Added security The very nature of care homes – which often have an ‘open door’ policy and experience large numbers of family visitors in addition to routine deliveries and maintenance workers – can make them susceptible to security breaches.
Care home staff are among the most
dedicated, often working unsocial hours in very busy environments to care for residents who have multiple physical and emotional needs. However, as in any other industry they are also human, and the number of controlled drugs registered on the Controlled Drug (CD) reporting tool as either lost, stolen, or otherwise missing
A number of drugs administered in care homes are temperature sensitive
February 2025
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com
amounted to 2,899 in 2018/19. An approved medical fridge comes with double manual or digital locks as standard, limiting the risk of unauthorised access and tightening security procedures.
Maintaining a fridge for safety and efficiency If you have invested in an approved medical refrigerator to store your cold chain products, there are a number of simple measures you can take to ensure it operates to its optimum capacity, and that you get value for money. A medical fridge should be sited in a
well-ventilated room which is maintained between 10°C and 25°C, away from external windows and all heat sources such as radiators or direct sunlight, and at least 5-10 cm from walls and other units. Some products can be irreversibly
degraded even by brief periods at sub-zero temperatures, particularly vaccines. To avoid any possibility of freezing, do not place any medicines against the walls or the floor of the fridge.
The fridge should be filled to no more than 75 per cent capacity to allow adequate air circulation, and stock should be stored according to first expiry.
It must be kept clean and serviced regularly, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. An investment in an advanced medical
fridge need not place an undue financial burden on a care home. There is a wide range of model designs and capacities range from 47 to 400 litres – in other words, a product to cater for even the smallest independent care home. There is huge added value to be gained from contactless temperature readings,
Colin Burgess
Colin Burgess is senior technical manager for Lec Medical. He has 40 years’ experience in the design and manufacture of white goods, primarily in refrigeration and heat pump and solar technologies, and has been working as a product design manager for 20 years.
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data retention, and automated alarm systems and back-up, in terms of workload efficiency, reduced waste, and in ensuring costly medicines – and, most importantly, your residents – are kept safe.
Reference 1.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov. uk/media/5a7f354de5274a2e87db474b/ Medicines_in_care_homes_A.pdf
2.
https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance- providers/adult-social-care/storing- medicines-fridges-care-homes
3.
https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/ major-report/state-care/2022-2023
4.
https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/fridges/ article/how-to-store-food-safely-in-the- fridge-a05PO7F3s4m3
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