Medication Reconciliation: An Exemplary Approach to Augment and Improve Patient Safety.

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Background: Medication reconciliation (MedRec) is an often-neglected area when it comes to patient safety, which can prove detrimental to patients and put a strain on healthcare professionals. Awareness of this concept is important to improve and maintain the quality of patient care. Objective: To study the knowledge, practice and perception of health care workers regarding medication reconciliation and procedure evaluation in a tertiary care hospital in Pune. Methods: The study was conducted in three phases. The first phase assessed the knowledge, practice and perception (K, P, P) of 124 healthcare professionals in relation to MedRec using a questionnaire and the process of MedRec in a tertiary care hospital. The second phase involved the application of interventions to improve the K, P, P of healthcare staff and the MedRec process and the third phase was the re-evaluation of the above parameters. Results: The first phase of assessing participants' K, P, P showed less impressive results, especially for residents, followed by care managers. The MedRec process at admission was just 49%. However, the scenario changed in the post-intervention phase when the knowledge, perception and practice of all participants improved significantly (P ≤ 0.05). Participants showed improved knowledge, with over 90% answering correctly after the interventions, which also enhanced their practices and perceptions. An improvement was also observed in overall medication reconciliation where 74% cases had complete documentations of medications at admission, suggesting that the interventions were actually fruitful. Conclusion: Knowledge, perception and practice of healthcare workers regarding MedRec does have an impact on the procedure itself and hence it is important to be aware regarding the process to provide a good quality of patient services.