Guidance
This guideline covers medicines support for adults (aged 18 and over) who are receiving social care in the community. It aims to ensure that people who receive social care are supported to take and look after their medicines effectively and safely at home. It gives advice on assessing if people need help with managing their medicines, who should provide medicines support and how health and social care staff should work together.
NICE has also produced guidelines on managing medicines in care homes and home care for older people.
Last reviewed: 30 March 2017
Next review: This guidance will be reviewed if there is new evidence that is likely to change the recommendations.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- governance arrangements and joint working between health and social care
- assessing medicines support needs
- supporting people to take their medicines, including covert administration and managing concerns
- staff training and competency
- sharing medicines information and record keeping
- safely ordering and supplying medicines and transporting, storing and disposing of medicines
Who is it for?
- Social care practitioners (including care workers and social workers) providing care for people in the community
- Health professionals providing care for people receiving social care in the community, and their support staff
- Commissioners and providers of services for people receiving social care in the community
- People receiving social care in the community, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.