Administering medication in care homes: everyday challenges
In-house versus external medication dispensing: A study of six care homes reveals significant differences in error rates. Findings, analysis, practical implications.
The study at a glance
Preparing medication is one of the most sensitive processes in residential care. It requires expertise, concentration and time. In everyday practice, however, it is often interrupted, carried out alongside other tasks or complicated by short-notice changes to medication. A study published in 2024 provides figures on how strongly the method of preparation influences the frequency of errors.
The study appeared in April 2024 in the journal “Prävention und Gesundheitsförderung”. It compared six residential care facilities. In some of the homes, the nursing staff prepared the medicines themselves; in the others, a pharmacy or a blister packaging centre took over this task. The data were collected between February and the end of July 2022. In total, more than 29,000 individual medicines were checked.
The two facilities that prepared medication themselves had error rates of 2.51% and 2.67% of the medicines checked. In the four externally supplied facilities, the rates ranged from 0.06% to 0.24%1
Based on the preparation process as a whole, around one in six internal preparation runs was affected.
What this means in practice
Talk to us in person
Would you like to find out whether external preparation makes sense for your facility or pharmacy? Get in touch: on 12 and 13 November we will be at the German Nursing Day (Deutscher Pflegetag) at hub27 Berlin, stand 37.