SUMMARY - Safe Medications Management project: Key issues and ...

Longer-term work on establishing common authorities and practice directives for ‘who cando what’ in medication management across all the State/Territory Drugs and Poisonslegislation.Full implementation of the APAC Guidelines, with organisational or regional MedicationAdvisory Committees to oversee medication management systems for residential andcommunity aged care. The collection of data and the monitoring of medication activitiesagainst standards are fundamental to good clinical governance.Development of a small, easily referable set of agreed Guidelines on effective and safemedication management for use by clinical staff in residential and community aged caresettings – also to be promulgated nationally for use by medical, aged care and pharmacystaff.Options for a standard core curriculum in medication management in the Vocational andEducation Training (VET) level Certificates III and IV in Aged Care Work and Home andCommunity Care, and Certificate III in Health Services Assistance. A related issue is anagreed standard for course delivery and measuring the achievement of course objectives.Development of education modules in basic national/state/territory health law, regulation,principles and practice applicable to RNs, aged care facility and service managers, andothers involved in the day-to-day delivery of medications. For example – the module ‘Therole of the RN in contemporary aged care’, as delivered in Queensland, Victoria and NewSouth Wales. In addition to understanding the legal framework relating to medicationmanagement, there are some indications that service managers and nurses are concernedabout consent, confidentiality and privacy. Their anxiety about handling such matters isheightened by difficulties in understanding the differences between statute and commonlaw, particularly as it applies to consent, and how the various national and state/territorylaws on privacy and confidentiality, information privacy, and Freedom of Information apply.A system to address discharge from acute hospital to residential care has been developed inVictoria by the North East Valley Division of GPs in collaboration with the VictorianDepartment of Health. It might be prudent to consider the feasibility of extending thisnationally.Methods for strengthening the management knowledge and skills of senior and supervisingaged care staff (residential and community) to enable them to plan and implementsolutions to problems in their work environments. It was evident from many responses tothe survey, that senior staff could see practical problems and often had ideas about how toaddress them (e.g. auditing medication errors), but appeared to lack either the confidenceor the authority to implement them.Identification of relevant national committees and working groups on medicationmanagement and co-ordination of efforts. This may include establishment of a nationalclearing house. In an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, Volume 189 Number 10 inNovember 2008, by Russell, Boxall and Leeder, it was noted that t.here are over 100advisory bodies nationally (not including sub-committees and working parties) but no oneofficial site to source them. The Department of Health and Ageing were contacted andasked for the list of all extra-departmental national and advisory committees. They27