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Old 21-01-2011, 19:23   #14
Margaret Pilkington
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Re: Unused medications

Quote:
Originally Posted by grego View Post
I work in hospital pharmacy as some of you know so here's what happens now. Medications returned to pharmacy from patients homes have to be destroyed because we cannot 100% guarantt they are fit to use, storage, tampered with etc. However we now do use patients own drugs in the hospital, all patients are asked to bring in their own supply, which we check and assess for "fit for use". It means that the patients dont miss doses, we dont have to change their brands and we can make sure that the correct medications are prescribed on their In-patient charts, we check if patients have further supplies at home and only supply on discharge if we need to which helps to cut down on waste, hope that answers some of the questions.
I agree it sometimes seems a real shame to throw things away, but can you imagine the uproar if they were used and they'd been contaminated in some way....
Hooray, hooray........I am really glad about that.
When I was Ward Sister I was always banging on about how it could save lots of money....also patients would say that we weren't giving them the right meds, because they were getting different brands to what they used themselves.....or were getting generic versions(unbranded) which were either different shapes or different colours.

Thanks for that info Grego.....I know this may sound really sad, but you have made my day!
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