Exploring the Roles of Nurses in Medication Reconciliation for Older Adults at Hospital Discharge: A Narrative Approach

Medication reconciliation (MR) is the process of comparing a patient's medication orders to all of the medications that the patient has been taking in order to identify and resolve medication discrepancies. It is an effective means of risk management to avoid medication errors (eg, omissions, duplication, dosage errors, or drug interactions). Some guidelines explicitly state that MR is a pharmacist-led transition of care; however, there is a shortage of qualified pharmacists to meet the increasing clinical needs, and clinical nurses' roles have not been clearly described. This paper aimed to enable nurses to gain confidence in contributing to MR at discharge and to make the industry aware of the potential risks if nurses do not actively intervene in this area. A narrative approach was used to introduce experiences in identifying discrepancies and medication errors through MR at discharge in a geriatric ward of an academic medical center hospital in China. The nurses' main roles in MR involve chasing, checking, and education. Clinical nurses, an untapped hospital resource, can actively engage in MR at discharge if they receive effective training and motivation. Multidisciplinary collaboration at discharge allowed many discrepancies to be reconciled before harming older patients. It is worth conducting further research in MR when discharging older adults, such as the cost-effectiveness of nurses' efforts, the value of electronic tools and the impact of MR-targeted education and training for nursing students and nursing staff.