Premium
Medication reconciliation in psychiatric hospitals: some reflections
Author(s) -
Lertxundi Unax,
Corcóstegui Beatriz,
Prieto Marta,
Gonzalez Unai,
Arana Anunciación
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of pharmacy practice and research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 2055-2335
pISSN - 1445-937X
DOI - 10.1002/jppr.1224
Subject(s) - medicine , psychiatry , harm , pharmacy , clinical pharmacy , medication reconciliation , unit (ring theory) , health care , family medicine , pharmacist , psychology , social psychology , mathematics education , economics , economic growth
Medication errors are one of the most common causes of harm in hospitalised patients, and these errors are often due to medication discrepancies at care transitions. Psychiatric hospitals have various characteristics that make medication reconciliation particularly challenging, such as: the length and number of admissions; the high number of care transitions; the difficulty of conducting a clinical interview with patients; the characteristics of psychoactive drugs; and segmentation in healthcare. In this paper, we present a series of real cases of medication discrepancies detected in our daily clinical practice in the pharmacy unit in order to illustrate the factors that aggravate the problem in psychiatric hospitals.