Together for Short Lives, the leading children’s palliative care charity in the UK, has announced the release of the updated Medicines Management Toolkit. This book, which can be downloaded from their website at no cost provides guidance and information on improving the safety and quality of medicines management in children’s palliative care service in the UK.
The introduction to the book describes the use of medications is the most frequent healthcare intervention, with an estimated 860 million prescriptions issued each year across the National Health Service (NHS). Inevitably, with such a large number of interventions, there is a risk of adverse reactions and errors that can lead to patient harm. This risk is not confined to the NHS, but is present in any organisation involved in the prescribing, administration and supply of medication – including children’s palliative care services.
In her introduction to the Toolkit, Barbara Gelb, Together for Short Lives’ CEO says that the challenge of ensuring babies, children and young people with life-limiting conditions and their families receive consistently safe care delivered to a high standard is an issue of both corporate and individual accountability. This latest resource from Together for Short Lives aims to provide support to individual professionals, care teams and organisations as they work together to provide a high standard of care in medicines management.
This toolkit is designed as guidance to improve the safety and quality of medicines management in children’s palliative care services across the United Kingdom. It may also assist those working in other children’s and young people’s healthcare settings. The target audience is care professionals, such as nurses, doctors and pharmacists, and their support workers.
You can download the Medicines Management Toolkit for free here.
Leave a Reply