The healthcare needs of people living in nursing homes are rising due the fact that there is a population with increasing frailty and comorbidities. I work in Group Mutuam that provides healthcare in geriatrics, including sub-acute, nursing homes, primary care and home care. We have Healthcare Teams (physicians and nurses) that attend inpatients in nursing homes; from the Pharmacy Service; we give them support in all areas related to medication.
The healthcare needs of people living in nursing homes are rising due the fact that there is a population with increasing frailty and comorbidities. I work in Group Mutuam that provides healthcare in geriatrics, including sub-acute, nursing homes, primary care and home care. We have Healthcare Teams (physicians and nurses) that attend inpatients in nursing homes; from the Pharmacy Service; we give them support in all areas related to medication.
The first thing we do in the morning is to review the medications of the patients admitted in nursing homes from the day before. We receive all the documents (treatment, diagnostics etc.) by email. This is a thorough and consuming time task, as our patients are polymedicated and attended by primary and secondary care physicians. We check it for inappropriate drugs, errors, cost efficacy etc., following a protocol that we have established. We send our recommendations to the physician and in some cases we discus them directly or by phone.
We continue our day with medication budget controls, and controlling quality of prescriptions required by our National Health System (CatSalut. Generalitat Catalonia).
All day long, physicians and nurses come to our desk or we receive phone calls with different queries about medications that we have to answer.
Some days are a little different because we attend different kinds of meetings. Periodically we meet with physicians and nurses to discuss medication revisions, the quality of the prescription and the budget. We also attend follow-up meetings with healthcare professionals of other institutions and the pharmacy coordinator of the Catalan Heath System.
Moreover, as the Pharmacy Service is involved in all the different areas our Group, long-term care pharmacists also work in collaboration with other pharmacists of the Group, in the preparation of guidelines, protocols and formation activities, amongst other things.
