Reconciliation In Nursing

Medication reconciliation must be completed by a nurse, physician or pharmacist on admission and discharge to avoid medication discrepancies. Perform medication reconciliation on every patient and if the patient is unsure of the medications they take then contact their caregivers or their pharmacy to obtain an accurate list. Then teach patients how to manage their own medications. Recommend pill boxes or charts for those with memory impairments. Enlist spouses and children to help ensure patients are taking their medications as directed. Then perform medication reconciliation on patient discharge and continue this through all care settings.
I complete medication reconciliations on all two day post- discharge calls I make and the number of medication discrepancies I come across is astonishing. Most recently, I called a patient that was discharged from a skilled nursing facility with an illegibly, hand written medication list. This was a heart failure patient who had been started …show more content…
One of the largest trials to date occurred in North Carolina. North Carolina rolled out a state wide transitional care initiate in 2008 to evaluate the effectiveness of transitional care interventions in reducing hospital readmissions and improving patient outcomes. They enlisted 21, 375 Medicaid patients with complex chronic medical conditions discharged between July 2010- June 2011 in hospitals across the state. They divided the patients into two groups, a transitional care group and a usual care group. The transitional group received a number of transitional care interventions, including the ones I have mentioned in this article while the usual group received normal patient care. The findings showed that one readmission was averted for every six patients who received transitional care (Jackson, et al,