Patient safety toolkit
This toolkit is intended to aid the assessment of different aspects of patient safety with a view to making improvements.
Medicines Reconciliation Tool
Patients are vulnerable during changes in care level particularly with respect to medication errors.
This Medicines Reconciliation Tool, which is adapted from the NHS Education for Scotland (NES) and Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) tool, assesses the safety of the interface between primary and secondary care in terms of the general practice role in medication reconciliation following any patient’s discharge from hospital.
The audit of at least 20 patients aged 65 years and over following hospital discharge, helps to assess how promptly and how accurately medication changes suggested by the hospital have been made. It also assesses the extent to which changes have been discussed with patients.
This tool deliberately focuses on vulnerable patients who are likely to need alterations to medication when their care level changes, where it is easy for mistakes to be made.