Medicines shortages and unavailability of community pharmacy staff are affecting adult social care providers in the UK, a survey by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Ipsos has suggested.
Almost half (50%) of the 2,331 adult social care providers responding to the survey said the medication support they receive from community pharmacies fully meets their needs and 39% said it meets their needs ‘to some extent’.
However, almost one in 10 (8%) said the support that they receive did not meet their needs.
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Respondents who felt their needs weren’t being met identified difficulties and delays with medication, including delivery and shortages; communication and availability of community pharmacy staff; and challenges around administration and training provided.
Kris O’Connor is organisational medicines manager at HC-One, one of the UK’s largest care home providers, and said it is ‘of paramount importance’ that care homes have ‘consistent pharmacy services that meet our resident’s needs’.
And she explained the value of care homes working with local pharmacies and GP services ‘to find an alternative approach [to managing medicines] that results in positive outcomes for our residents’.
Survey respondents said a lack of access to pharmacy support causes delays in receiving medication, providing care and impacts medication reviews and changes to medications.
It can also ‘directly impact’ the health, quality of life and safeguarding of the people cared for under adult social care services, as well as leading to increased errors with medicines, respondents said.
Less than half of survey participants (49%) said they have always been able to access the medicines support they need.
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Jacqueline Manly, team leader with the Hounslow Care Home Support Team at the Heart of Hounslow Centre for Health, believes delays in medicine access are causing ‘unnecessary admission’ to hospital, with some prescriptions not arriving ‘for a day or two’ and putting vulnerable residents at risk, such as those with sepsis.
However, around two-thirds of adult social care providers said that the support they received to monitor and review medicines errors fully meets their needs, while 28% said it meets their needs to some extent, according to the CQC.
Patience Bamisaye, a senior lecturer in international and adult nursing and a part-time care home nurse, says the medicine training of nurses ‘is not standardised’, but that good working relationships between community nurses and pharmacists can bring ‘tremendous change’.
‘When there is good communication and a good relationship with pharmacy, things get done correctly. Wastage is reduced. Patients get their medication when they need this,’ she said.
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But Ms Bamisaye warned that communication with pharmacies teams can be much harder at the weekend, with slower responses making it a ‘challenge’ to provide medicine for patient’s requiring a quick response.
A version of this article first appeared on our sister title The Pharmacist
