Medicines in Care - Prompting vs Administration

Prompting Vs Administration of medicines..
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A topic close to many of our hearts if we are in the business of caring for people who take or use any form of medication.
It's a mine field isn't it? If you or your care staff were administering medicines to your service users - you would want to ensure that they were fully trained and competent to do so wouldn't you? Me too.
Supporting people in taking their medication is all a bit scary.
What if you get it wrong? The results could be disastrous and therefore many agencies prefer to think they are acting on the safe side by not getting involved in medicines administration at all.
As a result care organisations are still not training their carers in this vitally important area of care.
Why? Because they are under the mis perception that because they only prompt the administration of medicines, and do not (in their eyes) administer it, they therefore do not need to go to the trouble or expense of training their team.
BUT - did you know that in the eyes of the law Administration means to both personally administer AND to prompt the administration of medicines? Therefore, if you are prompting medication you are actually administering it, there is no difference in the eyes of the law.
The same checks need to be in place, the same record keeping needs to be completed, the same level of knowledge is required to fully support the client - even if you only prompt from a monitored dosage system.
The monitored dosage system must be prepared by the pharmacy or a dispensing doctor for you to legally prompt or administer from it and whilst they have a responsibility to ensure that it leaves the pharmacy with the correct medication inside, you still have the responsibility to ensure that the right person gets the right dose of the right medicines by the right route at the right time.
So - if you are supporting service users who use medication you must ensure that you give your care workers the best possible training, relevant to your sector of care, that meets CSCI and Skills for Care requirements in order to safe guard your clients, your care workers and your business.