Adopting the Care Home Charter for Medicines

The Patients Association’s Care Home Charter for Medicines is an evidence-based and expert-led tool to help improve medication practices for people living in care homes across the UK.

Seven tips for ensuring that the charter is embedded into the culture within your home

Introduce the Charter to staff and ask them how they believe it could be best implemented within the home.
Provide a copy of the Charter to all staff, residents and relatives and place a copy on prominent display.
Train staff to identify possible signs and symptoms of dysphagia.
Share the Newt Guidelines or Swallowing Difficulties with staff members to show them where they can find information on what to do when a resident has swallowing problems.
Choose a senior member of the team to learn more about dysphagia including developing a a better understanding of administering medicines to residents with dysphagia. The University of East Anglia runs a course on the administration of medicines to people with dysphagia.
Incorporate the standards for the charter into the different audits performed within the home.
Incorporate the charter recommendations into your electronic care plans.

Were these tips useful? Please let us know via this short survey.

Contact the Patients Association helpline

The Patients Association offers a free national helpline providing specialist information and advice to help patients make sense of their health and social care.

Patients can talk directly to trained advisers in strict confidence about any concerns, questions or general experiences they have regarding the NHS and social care systems.

The helpline is open from 9.30 am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, and calls outside these times are returned as soon as possible during opening hours.

This information was updated on 21st February 2022 and will be reviewed in August 2023.

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