Imperial College London
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Dr Thomas Woodcock

Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health

Senior Research Fellow
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 1838thomas.woodcock99

 
 
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Location

 

328Reynolds BuildingCharing Cross Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Marvin:2016:10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010230,
author = {Marvin, V and Kuo, S and Poots, A and Woodcock, T and Vaughan, L and Bell, D},
doi = {10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010230},
journal = {BMJ Open},
title = {Applying Quality Improvement methods to address gaps in medicines reconciliation at transfers of care from an acute UK hospital},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010230},
volume = {6},
year = {2016}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Objectives: Reliable reconciliation of medicines at admission and dischargefrom hospital is key to reducing unintentional prescribing discrepancies attransitions of health care. We introduced a team approach to the reconciliationprocess at an acute hospital with the aim of improving the provision ofinformation and documentation of reliable medication lists to enable clear,timely communications on discharge.Setting: An acute 400 bedded teaching hospital in London UK.Participants: The effects of change were measured in a simple randomsample of ten adult patients a week on the Acute Admissions Unit over 18months.Interventions: Quality Improvement methods were used throughout.Interventions included education and training of staff involved at ward leveland in the pharmacy department, introduction of medication documentationtemplates for electronic prescribing and for communicating information onmedicines in discharge summaries co-designed with patient representatives.Results: Statistical Process Control analysis showed reliable documentation(complete, verified and intentional changes clarified) of current medication on49.2% of patients’ discharge summaries. This appears to have improved (to85.2%) according to a post-study audit the year after the project end.Pharmacist involvement in discharge reconciliation significantly increased,and improvements in the numbers of medicines prescribed in error or omittedfrom the discharge prescription are demonstrated. Variation in weeklymeasures is seen throughout but particularly at periods of changeover of newdoctors and introduction of new systems.Conclusion: New processes led to a sustained increase in reconciledmedications and thereby an improvement in the number of patientsdischarged from hospital with unintentional discrepancies (errors oromissions) on their discharge prescription.The initiatives were pharmacist-led but involved close working and sharedunderstanding about roles and responsibilities between doctors, nurses
AU  - Marvin,V
AU  - Kuo,S
AU  - Poots,A
AU  - Woodcock,T
AU  - Vaughan,L
AU  - Bell,D
DO  - 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010230
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 2044-6055
TI  - Applying Quality Improvement methods to address gaps in medicines reconciliation at transfers of care from an acute UK hospital
T2  - BMJ Open
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010230
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/31676
VL  - 6
ER  -
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