Medicines care plans

It is important to have a medicines support care plan for people who receive support with their medicines in an adult social care setting. 

This should include details of both personal care and practical support, and how staff will support a person with specific medicines.

A good medicines care plan will include:

• specific information relating to the health conditions being treated
• the use of specific medicines, including:
  • 'when required' medicines
  • time-specific medicines
  • covert medicines. 

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) provides guidance that includes care planning and managing medicines for adults in:

• care homes
• community settings.

The guidance recommends that care staff should fully involve people in decisions about their treatment and care and support them to do so.

Points to consider

A medicines care plan should be:

• Person-centred: Medicines care plans must be individual to the person and identify their medicines support needs with relevant and accurate information about how to support them to take their medicines. This may range from:

  • prompting or reminding a person to take a medicine
  • helping them to open packets and popping out the tablets
  • administering the medicine itself.

  Their wishes should be central to this, or if they lack mental capacity, staff should initiate a best interest decision on their behalf. 

• Co-produced: Involving people and their families or carers ensures that the medicines care plan includes information on people’s preferences. It is important to consider how people like to take their medicines. For example, do they like to take them with water? Do they prefer to take them all together, or one at a time?
• Reviewed regularly: It is important to record in the medicines care plan when a medicines review has taken place and any outcomes from it. Any known or potential side effects of medicines should be highlighted to make staff aware. It should also provide details of any monitoring that might be necessary.

• Condition-specific: Medicines care plans should include relevant information relating to people's health condition, including when to monitor a condition or when rescue medicines might be needed. For example, there may be a separate care plan explaining how to manage medicines to control diabetes or seizures.

  The care plan may need additional information and input from external healthcare professionals and when to ask for further clinical advice and support.

• Accessible: The language in a person’s medicines support care plan should be accessible and easy to read for all staff as well as the person themself. Staff should identify and record issues that make it difficult for people to receive, understand or communicate information and record any adjustments to help them. All providers of publicly-funded adult social care must meet the Accessible Information Standard.

  The Safety Gap Report found that people with sight or hearing loss can be at greater risk if information about medicines is not accessible or if they are not fully involved in decisions. For example, people with diabetes and sight loss may struggle to use devices like insulin pens or glucose monitors without clear instructions or training.

  Care plans must record:

  • any communication needs, such as large print, braille or spoken information
  • how staff will support the person to make informed choices about their medicines.

Promoting independence

Examples of supporting people include:

• Making adjustments when staff are using personal protective equipment (PPE). For example, wearing a face mask means a person is unable to lip-read if they have difficulty hearing or are a Deaf person who uses British Sign Language (BSL). Staff may be able to access see-through face masks to assist with lip reading.
• Providing or using text phones or laptops with a large font. Consider people who may find it difficult to use or access digital methods of communication.
• Providing remote video link access to a registered interpreter for people who use BSL.
• Making reasonable adjustments for people based on their needs, for example using Braille, screen readers or Makaton. Other reasonable adjustments may include the use of multi-compartment compliance aids.