Medicines are such powerful compounds that have the potential to control discomfort, diseases and powerful compounds that control disease, ease discomfort and prolong life for millions of people and are generally useful as well. The administration of medication is the core area of weakness in health and social care services. This weakness may result in life threatening mistakes by the social care staff.

 

However every medicines have some side effects that may degrade the health of an individual. Moreover side effects is not the main cause, people may also intake medicines without having any requirement or for any immoral purpose.  Thus the handling of medicines is an essential task and requisite in every health and social care environment.

 

Care-workers are responsible to look after and providing medicines to the other people no matter if they are adult or young, healthy or sick, in every situation it is the prime duty of the care workers to look after them. This can be correlated with any of the practices that are set in connection something that needs a clear view of usage.

 

This report will help in highlighting the basic safe medication administration principles and will help in increasing the awareness of care staff in diverse social care settings.

 

 

 

 

 

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The social care service has access to advice from a pharmacist.
Medicines should be used only for curing or preventing disease, or to relieve symptoms but not to punish or control anybody’s behavior.

 

 

The safe and proper administration of medicines refers to the way in which medicines are given such as to maximize benefits and to avoid causing harm. The authorities should provide their staff with a place their own local policies and procedures for the safe medication administration for each particular unit.

 

The administration of medicines is an important step to be taken in the professional practice. The task cannot be performed solely, it can be performed only with the assistance and strict compliance with the written prescription of the medical practitioner (Association, 2008).

 

The staff should remove medicines from their original containers from which they were dispensed. This is because, if the medicines get mixed with the other medicine, I would become harmful for the person who is going to take it.

 

In order to ensure security while giving medicines to the patients, the staff is required to:

There may be chances of occurrence of an error or a mistake while prescribing, dispensing or administration of medicines. Mostly the medication errors never harm an individual but a few errors can have serious consequences. In such cases it would be better to record and investigate the cause of errors so that they could gain experience from the incidents and could prevent a similar error happening in the future (NHS, 2007)

 

Some examples of such errors include Wrong dose is given, too much, too little, Medication is not given, Medication is given to the wrong child or adult. Also the service providers should not ever ignore any error instead they should report incidents to the authorities ignoring the fear of an unjustifiable level of recrimination.

It would be beneficial to record everything whatever happens or whatever you do. The human memory is not that reliable to remember each and every incident that happened in a day. If recorded accurately, you will not face any scolding from the seniors. Accurately means recording at the time they work has been done, not at the time you started functioning it. For example, if you start preparing a medicinal  dose, there was no point to record it at that time because you are not sure about that they will take it or not but once recorded as it means that they have accepted and taken it (Council, 2007).

 

It is important to store and preserve all the medicines under the control of the designated staff members. The users of services who holds their own medication, should store their medication in a secure place to ensure the safety of themselves and others.

The designated members can store the medications in a separate cupboard and should be checked occasionally for any pilferage or dirt etc. Access to and control of Drug Keys must be restricted to an authorized staff member and it should be inspected by the pharmacist himself.

 

The legislation that has a direct impact upon the handling of medication in the setting of social care includes:

The Medicines Act 1968
The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
The Misuse of Drugs (Safe Custody) Regulations 1973 SI 1973 No 798 as amended by the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001
The NHS Scotland Pharmaceutical Service (Regulations) 1995
The Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 as amended by The Regulation of Care Act 2001
The Children Act 1989
The Children’s Act (Scotland) 1995
The Data Protection Act 1998
The Care Standards Act 2000
The Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001
The Health and Social Care Act 2001
Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000

 

 

 

After going through the above evaluation it would not be wrong to say that administration of medicines is really a very important and a tedious task. The administrative staff has to follow all the above said principles which are important in the day to day functioning of the health care unit. The above report valuates the effectiveness of policies and procedures used in health and social care settings while administrating medicine. A need of a an effective administrating staff is a prerequisite for every health care unit.