Your Medicines Matter

4th August 2017

Hospitals across Greater Manchester have launched a campaign called ‘Your medicines matter’ to remind patients and carers to bring their medicines when they come into hospital for an appointment, are admitted or need to go to A&E.

The region’s hospitals are making the ‘Your medicines matter’ plea to improve safety and provide a better experience for patients. It is important to bring in medicines from home because you will:

•  help hospital staff decide on the best and safest treatment for you
•  continue taking medicines you recognise
•  reduce waste and the cost of hospitals reissuing medicines you already have
•  help reduce delays when it is time to go home.

If you cannot bring your medicines when you are first admitted, for example if you have come in as an emergency, relatives or carers will be asked to bring medicines in when they visit. By ‘medicines’, our hospitals mean anything you have bought from pharmacies or supermarkets and are taking or using, as well as medicines that have been prescribed for you – tablets, capsules, liquids, creams, inhalers, drops, injections and patches.

When you come into hospital, staff will check your medicines. If they are safe to use, they will be stored securely along with any other medicines you may need and will be used during your stay. When leaving hospital, staff will ensure you have at least a seven day supply of medicines to go home with.

Gareth Adams, Programme Manager at the Greater Manchester Hospital Pharmacy Transformation Collaborative, said, “By bringing your own medicines into hospital it allows us to get a quick and accurate picture of everything you are taking or using. This helps us to provide safe and appropriate care and also means your medicines are available to take from the start of your admission.”

As well as helping to improve safety, if more people could remember to bring medicines from home it would also reduce the cost of supplying duplicate medicines and reduce some of the region’s medicine waste. If levels of medicines waste in Greater Manchester match those seen across the country this could equate to £18.8m annually which, if saved, could be reinvested into providing front-line care for patients.