What Are The Dos & Don'ts To Safely Storing Medicines?
The law dictates that care homes, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities must store medicines in a safe manner, ensuring that they are not accessible to anyone who’s vulnerable. This is especially important in facilities where residents or patients suffer from dementia, disabilities or mental health problems.
Facilities like care homes and hospitals should think carefully about how each individual resident’s or patient’s medicines are stored. Today’s medicines are incredibly effective at making living with various diseases and health complaints more manageable. Unfortunately, no medication is without side effects, one of which, in the case of an overdose or taking the incorrect medicine can be a severe reaction or even death.
In any situation where a care worker (or relative if the person is receiving at home care) is responsible for ensuring that a resident is taking the correct medicine and the correct dosage, a set of principles should be followed to ensure that medication is stored in a safe and organised way.
All medication should be labeled
Pharmacies label all medication with a dosage amount, best before date, and patient’s name before prescribing it. However, over time these labels can fade or even peel off, so it’s important that all medications are clearly re-labled should this happen. This is especially important if all medications are stored together, instead of each resident’s medications being stored in their bedroom, as mix-ups occur more frequently when various medicines are stored together. Some care homes use a colour coding system where each resident’s room has a colour assigned to it and that colour label is applied to medicines and anything else that relates to the resident. This is a simple method that tends to work well in smaller care homes, for larger facilities a number system can work well where each resident is assigned a number.
Each person’s medication should be stored safely away
If each resident’s medications are going to be stored individually in their bedrooms, it’s important that they are safely locked away. For this, fitting each room with a Lockabox that has a three digit security code on it could be the answer. These are particularly suited as they can be stored anywhere, even in the fridge so are perfect for storing medications that need to be kept cool such as insulin, for instance. Lockabox® comes in a variety of colours including a clear design which is ideal for use in rooms that belong to dementia sufferers, as part of the condition is wanting to see what’s inside of everything, leading to the constant opening and closing of drawers, boxes, and anything that can’t be seen through.
A medication chart
When it comes to ensuring that each resident has had their daily dose of medication, a chart can be a useful tool. Whether they take their medication themselves or a carer gives it to them, a chart that notes how much of each medicine a resident needs along with a box that can be ticked when each dose is taken is a good idea. As that way there can be no confusion over whether or not a resident has had their medication.
