Mapping Greener HealthcareMapping Greener Healthcare

Goal: To use patient’s medicines from home.

Background: Ward staff were concerned at the interruption to treatment, risk of prescribing errors and waste of medications and money caused by patient medications from home going unused. In addition, an opportunity for patients to be encouraged to self-medicate was being missed.

Approach:

1. Patients and Family were advised to bring patients medication in from home on admission.
2.  Notices to use patient’s own medication first were put on all drug trolleys. 
3. Nurses checked that dose of medication had not changed from admission. 
4. Nurses administered medication using patient’s ownmedication where the medication had the patients name on it, was in date, in acceptable condition and not in a dossette box.

Savings: Cost savings of £398 have been calculated over the competition period for a sample of 10 patients who were representative of the ward mix. Using the conversion metric where £1 is equivalent to 0.43kg CO2e provides approximate carbon emissions savings of 31.5kg. Data on length of stay and probable levels of patients eligible to participate over the long term are not available. If we assume (conservatively) that the same ten patients are replicated on the ward every six weeks then annual savings on this ward alone would be £3,449 and 273 kg CO2e.