Research Article: Effectiveness of Medication Reconciliation in a Chinese Hospital: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
Abstract:
Medication discrepancies are a common phenomenon in healthcare, which can adversely impact quality of care, patient safety, and resource utilization at transitions of care. As a result of poor communication between healthcare professionals or between healthcare professionals and patients/carers, medication discrepancies often occur at transitions of care, where patients always receive new medications or have changes made to their existing medications. Thus, improved methods of ensuring an accurate medication history at admission are needed. Medication reconciliation (MR) is a method that can reduce medication-list discrepancies.– MR is a process of creating the most accurate list possible of all medications a patient is taking and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge. However, differences in the definition of MR used by different organizations lead to variability in MR practices., Inconsistent workflows have been recognized as a major challenge in expanding MR., At present, there are two models of MR process, namely, the proactive process and the retroactive process. In the proactive process, the interview with patients is performed upon patient arrival, whereas medical records are reviewed prior to communication with patients during the retrospective process. Several leading organizations worldwide, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint Commission, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), give priority to the proactive process.– This standard operating protocol (SOP) of WHO, named High s SOP, comprises four steps: () obtaining the best possible medication history (BPMH), which involves a systematic approach of acquiring a thorough list of all medications and verification of this information with at least other reliable source of information; () confirming the accuracy of the patient’s history; () reconciling the BPMH with prescribed medication(s); and () supplying accurate medical information.
Introduction:
Medication discrepancies are a common phenomenon in healthcare, which can adversely impact quality of care, patient safety, and resource utilization at transitions of care. As a result of poor communication between healthcare professionals or between healthcare professionals and patients/carers, medication discrepancies often occur at transitions of care, where patients always receive new medications or have changes made to their existing medications. Thus, improved methods of ensuring an accurate medication…
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