Medication Management in Residential Aged Care
Links & resources
Know and stay up to date with regulatory requirements
- Drugs and Poisons Acts of Victoria
- Drugs and Poisons Acts of NSW
- Guide to the Handling of Medications in Nursing Homes in NSW
- This document outlines policy and procedures for all aspects of medication handling, from obtaining medicines to reporting medication incidents. It provides best practice principles for the handling of medication and could be used as a basis for the formulation of local policy and procedure documents.
- Resource kit
- This is a Drugs and Poisons Controls in Victoria resource kit to enable implementation of the APAC guidelines for medication management in RACFs containing recommendations for modification of oral formulations. This list may not be up to date, refer also to the latest edition of the Australian Medicines Handbook.
- National Medicines Policy
The National Strategy for Quality Use of Medicines (2002) - The National Medicines Policy document includes a description of the policy elements – access the medicines, quality, safety and efficacy of medicines, quality use of medicines, a responsible and viable medicines industry and work in partnership. The National Strategy document contains more practical detail on achieving QUM – it identifies each partner and discusses their responsibilities, it identifies building blocks for achieving QUM and examines some of the available resources and initiatives that underpin the building blocks.
Know and stay up to date with accreditation requirements
- Accreditation standards
and Results and Processes Guide - The accreditation standards outline the standards required to achieve accreditation. The results and processes guide provides a more extensive examination of what is involved to demonstrate achievement of each standard.
Know and stay up to date with professional body standards
- APAC (Nov.2002), "Guidelines for Medication Management in Residential Aged Care Facilities", 3rd edition, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.
- This document discusses 14 recommendations for medication management in Residential Aged Care. A number of appendices included, some of which contain tools that registered nurses will find useful for medication management.
- APAC (2005), "Guiding Principles to Achieve Continuity in Medication Management", Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.
- This document outlines the processes involved in medication management. It describes 10 guiding principles for achieving continuity in medication management. It also describes some specific strategies to achieve such continuity. It does not contain resources or tools.
- National Competency Standards for Nurses
- The competency documents produced by ANMC and published on the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia website outline competencies covering all aspects of professional practice for nurses.
