Guidance
This guideline covers safe and effective use of medicines in health and social care for people taking 1 or more medicines. It aims to ensure that medicines provide the greatest possible benefit to people by encouraging medicines reconciliation, medication review, and the use of patient decision aids.
NICE has also produced a guideline on medicines adherence.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- systems for identifying, reporting and learning from medicines-related patient safety incidents
- medicines-related communication systems for when patients move from one care setting to another
- medicines reconciliation and medication review
- self-management plans
- patient decision aids
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Social care practitioners
- Commissioners and providers
- People taking 1 or more medicines and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
March 2019: We have found no new evidence that affects the recommendations. For more information, see the surveillance decision.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces recommendation 1.4.2 in the NICE guideline on medicines adherence. It also updates and replaces NICE guideline PSG001 (December 2007).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.