Derbyshire Community Health Service (DCHS) provides a Community Response team (CRT) and Community First team to support reablement of care provision for patients discharged from hospital (step down) and admission avoidance (step up).
This service works closely with social care to ensure patients receive high standards of care to gain or regain skills to live as independently as possible within their own homes.
As part of the service the Band 2 and 3 Support Workers and band 4 Support Worker Supervisors may have to support patients with their medications. However, it has been identified that some patients are being excluded from the service due to high-risk medicine they were prescribed including controlled drugs, warfarin, and medicated patches for which the staff had no training to safely support the administration. In the past these patients were declined the service.
Following conversations with stakeholders and an assessment what is already available in terms of national offer, a bespoke non-registered staff medicine administration training and competency assessment has been developed by the Pharmacists Educators to allow to streamline medicine administration in the community.
Whilst developing our packages we ensured the training is comprehensive, covers legal requirements, drug-specific knowledge, safe handling, administration techniques, record-keeping, and emergency protocols.
So far, feedback from the non-registered staff which have undertaken the training and their managers has been overwhelmingly positive, and teams are excited about the new opportunity to look after wider group of patients. Our care will be more personalised, and patients' needs will be met in full. We asked the community teams to monitor the impact of increased service provision after the implementation of the training. We believe that by widening our service provision we can save precious beds in acute hospitals by facilitating quicker discharges or avoiding admissions.
