Aim Medicines reconciliation in children is an important intervention which prevents unintended medication discrepancies and medication errors from occurring when a child moves from one setting to another, e.g. from home to hospital admission. A national study in England across multiple sites has shown that 1/3 of medication discrepancies are prevented from occurring,¹ What has not been evaluated however, is the potential burden that medicines reconciliation would have on the resources, in particular on the pharmacy workforce. The overall aim of this project was to investigate the burden that is associated with admissions medicines reconciliation (AMR) in children.

Methods Over a 10 day period spanning over 4 weeks, rotational pharmacists carrying out hospital admission medicines reconciliation at a paediatric hospital in Birmingham, West Midlands were directly observed by a researcher (pharmacy student). This process was timed, and the student recorded the following observations: -

The number of AMRs that were initiated within 24 hours of admission

The number of AMRs that there completed within 24 hours of admission

The number of completed and incomplete medicines reconciliations

The reasons for incompletion of medicines reconciliation during the observation period.