Polypharmacy prescribing guidance - draft: consultation

18. Appendix F: Leaflets on Medication Sick Day Guidance

Resources for healthcare professionals and patients and carers

A wallet sized card has been developed and will be downloadable from the Healthcare Improvement Scotland website, for completion with an individual’s relevant medication.

This card is also available digitally on the Right Decision Service website and app and can be saved, printed or emailed.

Leaflets are available for healthcare professionals and for patients and carers, providing more details about the Medication Sick Day Guidance. These will be available on the Healthcare Improvement Scotland website.

Autopopulation of electronic prescription dosing instructions

One method to implement the Medication Sick Day Guidance is to include the advice within the dosing instruction on the prescription. This provides a number of triggers to discuss with the individual the importance of temporarily stopping these medicines during a potentially dehydrating illness: when issuing the prescription at consultation, when the medicine is dispensed and when referring to the dosing instruction on the medicine pack.

Each GP IT system has a means of autopopulating the prescription with the Medication Sick Day Guidance, e.g. in EMIS, the formulary EFM-file can be edited to include this dosing instruction which will be installed in each practice as the file is updated; in Vision the dosing instruction can be set by each practice using the default doses functionality.