Douglas Findlay

I consider this to be a really important topic, so I'm grateful that Jaione brought this up. The work being done in the UK by pharmacists and pharmacy workers is vital to patients and their carers, so the medicines reconciliation programme, designed to optimise compliance and minimise errors has done much to protect patients and maximise their recovery. My continuing worry, however, is implicit in Jaione's original question and it concerns the communication between organisations. There are still many areas across the UK that struggle to coordinate their communication between primary care and other providers, (acute, mental health and other community services), so patients are at risk on the handover when being discharged from one organisation to another. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that many people believe that their records can already be accessed by any health worker in any NHS organisation and so rely on this 'fact' instead of carrying a list of their medications into hospital.