In March 2018 the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) announced that they would be withdrawing the Standards for Medicines Management stating “We now recognise that it’s not within our remit as a regulator to provide clinical practice guidance of this nature, so we won’t be replacing these standards” The NMC instead will be working closely with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) as they review their professional guidance on The Safe Handling of Medicines which could provide an ideal model for future guidance. 

Given that medicines management is extremely important to nurses, pharmacists and many more healthcare professionals, patients and members of the public where does this leave us? With the NMC Guidance on its way out and the RPS guidance under review there has never been a better time to think about the way we handle medicines in our clinical areas. 

As medicines management is quite a large topic area this #WeMDT discussion will be focussing on the safe storage of medicines and how we can all work together to ensure that we are meeting current guidance (such as it is) and how we can work together moving forward as guidance evolves. The Tweetchat will be exploring the following questions:

• What do we mean by “safe storage of medicines” ?

• What is involved in keeping controlled drugs (CD’s) safe ?

• What about disposal of medicines and CD’s in our clinical areas?

• How should we manage medicines that require cold storage? How do we deal with things like fridge failures?

• What do we need to bear in mind regarding the safe storage and checking of other products such as IV fluids, O2 cylinders, medicines on resuscitation trollies etc?

• How can nurses and pharmacists work together to ensure safe storage of medicines... and who does what?

• How can we ensure, moving forward, that nurses and pharmacists communicate  well between especially in busy times and on hectic ward spaces?

About our guest hosts

Marie Batey is a registered nurse with ward to Board experience achieved across acute, regional and national health care organisations.  Currently leading on care quality and safety improvements at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Marie is very clear about what high quality care looks and feels like.  Having worked with others at the Trust to measure and start to develop safety culture, Marie is now working across the Medical Director and Nurse Directors Offices on a number of work streams, including improving practices associated with medicines storage, security and disposal.

Cathy Cooke is a pharmacist with broad practice experience of health and social care services including community pharmacy, general practice, prisons and immigration removal centres, police custody, medicines governance advisor to urgent care and domiciliary social care, and most recently elective surgical care.  Cathy has been a member of two NICE guideline development groups and has sat on a number of national advisory groups.  She is a fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine.