NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service: Time Critical Medicines Safety Improvement

Summary

Over one million patients in England rely on time critical medicines that must be taken on time, every time. The consequences of delays can be severe. Research from Parkinson's UK found that for every 17 people who experience problems getting their time critical medicines on time, one patient will die as a result. Delays also increase hospital stays by an average of four days.

To help address this challenge, three new web resources have been published as part of the Time Critical Medicines Safety Improvement.

These are designed to support hospitals wanting to improve the reliability of medicines administration and will be particularly useful for any Trust that has identified medicines administration as a priority within their Patient Safety Incident Response Plan.

Content

• Improving the safe use of time critical medicines
• Understanding time critical medicines to support improvement
• Defining time critical medicines