The handover that didn’t happen

Aisha Farouk left hospital with eleven medicines, four of them new, and a printed sheet she describes as perfectly clear and completely useless.

The two weeks after a discharge are, statistically, when things come apart: doubled doses, discontinued drugs still being taken, side effects nobody warned about.

The fortnight gap

Roughly one in six calls finds a duplication — the same drug arriving under two names from two prescribers who were each entirely correct.

The information is all correct on the page. The absence of anyone to ask is the problem.

Samuel Reyes, clinical pharmacy

Deprescribing, slowly

The pharmacist has prescribing rights in this service, which removes a referral step that used to add three weeks to every change.

“At my age you’re told to expect a longer list,” she says. “Nobody had suggested it could go the other way.”