Medication Reconciliation Essay

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Medication Reconciliation in the Hospital Setting
The transition of patients from an acute care setting to a home setting is often challenging and stressful. It can be complex for the patient to understand the instructions for discharge and, more importantly, it can be challenging and dangerous when it comes to ensuring the patient understands the medication reconciliation process. Successful transition to home is multifaceted and depends partially on an accurate and complete overview of all medications with the patient. This is an imperative safety measure across the continuum of care (Ruggiero, Smith, Copeland, Boxer, 2015). In 2005 The Joint Commission established medication reconciliation as National Patient Safety Goal 8 in an attempt
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Identification of medication should include frequency, dose, and documentation of any changes occurring throughout all healthcare encounters. The list should be used to compare the physician’s admission, transfer, and discharge orders in an organized manner, thus making recognition of discrepancies apparent before the list is communicated to the next healthcare provider or patient (Daly, 2013). In addition to the above definition, other errors related to medication would be: not properly listing the route, possible adverse interactions, and wrong administration form (i.e., pill vs. oral …show more content…
Of the 375 discharged patients in the study, 53 (14.1%) experienced one or more medication discrepancies, with 49.2% of those categorized as system related. Of patients who experienced medication discrepancies, 14.3% were re-hospitalized within 30 days compared with 6.1% who did not experience discrepancies. Among post-hospital adverse events, medications were the most common problem (66%- 72%), and nearly all post-hospital adverse drug events involved new medication or dosage change at time of discharge. Data on ADEs after discharge are limited; however, in one study, ADE occurrence was reported in 35% of adults taking more than five medications daily; 84% required medical attention and 11% required hospitalization. (p.165) This study, along with information from various studies similar to it, gives essential insight as to what changes need to be implemented in the reconciliation

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