Discharge Medicine Use Reviews. Why do patients access this service?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An evaluation of a service development to provide written and verbal encouragement to hospital patients to access the Discharge Medicines Use Review (dMUR) service with their local community pharmacist in order to support safe and effective medicines use after discharge.
IRAS ID
171234
Contact name
Michelle Yu Yin Lam
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 5 days
Research summary
Upto 50% of all medication errors are caused by poor transfer of information across care settings. Around 30% of patients newly started on a chronic medicine are non-adherent within 4 weeks after discharge from hospital, often intentionally because many experience problems including side effects, concerns about the medicines and difficulties with the practical aspects of taking the medicines. In 2011, the Discharge Medicines Use Review Service (dMUR) was developed to reduce medication errors and to support patients following discharge from hospital.
A telephone survey of community pharmacists in 2013 in Kent and Medway revealed 53% had never conducted a dMUR and dMURs comprised less than 2% of all MURs conducted; patients are therefore not accessing this service but the reasons for this is unknown.
Strategies from secondary care to improve uptake of dMURs in other parts of the country have been tried with little success. They required considerable time and effort from hospital pharmacists, hence were not sustainable over time. An intervention that is readily applicable to the vast majority of hospital patients and can be easily embedded into established pharmacy services would be likely to confer greater success.
A new inpatient pharmacy service development at The Kent and Canterbury hospital will provide patients with written information leaflets and verbal encouragement to attend the dMUR service during medicines reconciliation and on discharge. This study will seek to find if patients have attended a dMUR after discharge, their reasons for attendance or non-attendance and their experience of the dMUR if attended, by interviewing patients four weeks after their discharge by telephone. It will also explore patients’ expectations and experiences of the level of medicines information provided during their hospital stay.
Staff who provide the information about dMURs to patients, will give their views about the feasibility of doing this within a focus group.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SC/0111
Date of REC Opinion
19 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion