If you wonder whether you could do a better job asking the right questions about a patient’s medication history at admission, consider these 12 as a great starting point.
- What medications do you take at home?
- What is each medicine for?
- What is the dose?
- What medications do you take for your ____ (identify each medical condition the patient is known to have)?
- What medications do you take every day?
- What medications do you occasionally take?
- When do you take your medications?
- Have you recently started, stopped, or changed the medications you take? How so?
- What medications are prescribed by any specialists you may see?
- Do you use an inhaler (or other medications that are not available as pills, such as eye drops, creams, injections, nasal sprays, patches, and so on)?
- What medications do you take that do not require a prescription?
- When was the last time you took each of your medicines?
ECRI Institute. Medication reconciliation [guidance article]. Healthcare Risk Control 2015 Jun 5. Available with membership: http://www.ecri.org/components/hrc/pages/Pharm8.aspx.
