Sammanfattning
Background: Inadequate information about what medications a patient is taking may jeopardise patient safety upon admission to hospital. Medication reconciliation is a method that can mitigate this problem. Ålesund Hospital has conducted a number of projects over a period of years to describe the process of medication reconciliation, but the process has proven to be challenging to implement.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain insight into doctors’ and nurses’ experiences with medication reconciliation. Knowledge about this will be valuable in the effort to develop good routines for medication reconciliation, and thus may have a positive impact on patient safety in hospitals.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five doctors and four nurses who had experience with reconciling medication information. The sample included personnel from both the emergency ward and medical wards.
Results: In the informants’ experience, the process of medication reconciliation was inadequate. They stated that they used many different sources of information about the medications a patient was taking and that they were often unsure whether the information reflected the patient’s actual medication use. They described a process of reconciling medication information that entailed an unclear allocation of responsibilities and a lack of communication and standardisation of tasks.
Conclusion: Doctors and nurses agreed that medication reconciliation is important for patients. However, they experienced numerous challenges related to unreliable information sources and inadequate routines. They said there is a need to clarify responsibilities.