Management of medicines

Staff assessment form

A new Management of Medicines Competency Assessment has been added to help care services demonstrate regulatory compliance in regard to handling medicines.

NICE guidance (NG67 and SC1) recommends that the knowledge, skills and competencies of care staff who support service users with medicines are reviewed annually. The new staff assessment will provide verifiable evidence of full compliance, with completed forms stored for record-keeping purposes.

Policy & procedure

Our Management of Medicines policy and procedure document has been updated to provide general guidance to managers and staff on the safe management of medicines in care settings. It also contains guidance on completing the competency assessment mentioned above.

New subjects that have been added include:

• Medicines Reconciliation 
• Medicines Away from the Care Setting
• Medication Review
• Transfer of Care 
• End of Life Care

Topical application forms

In addition to the above, we have improved our body map topical application forms by adding further criteria to support compliance. Two new questions allow you to demonstrate that you have considered the risks associated with emollients and the risk of topical medicine use where individuals are living with dementia.

Vaccination consent

We have updated the Consent for Vaccination(s) form to allow for additional COVID-19 booster vaccinations and a second annual influenza vaccine. This will support the continuation of record-keeping for the consent of vaccination(s).

Password security

New settings & report

Two new settings have been added to help improve security. Users with full access to the system can now choose password expiry periods. Passwords will automatically expire once the selected date has passed and the user will then be required to create a new password.

Secondly, if you wish to strengthen password security, you can now set mandatory requirements for password creation. You can decide if your users need to use a mix of letters, numbers, mixed-case and special characters in their passwords.

To help you monitor password strength, a new management report has been added that displays whether users’ CareDocs passwords are considered weak, average or strong.

The importance of strong passwords

To help increase security and protect system and resident data, it’s best practice to use passwords that contain a mixture of letters, numbers, cases and special characters. Passwords should also be routinely changed just in case a password is exposed to someone with malicious intentions.

There are multiple motives for why someone would want to access sensitive information unlawfully. If you experience a data breach or personal/sensitive data is accessed by an individual without relevant permissions, this would need to be recorded and reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The simplest way to prevent this from happening is through effective password management.

CareDocs is Cyber Essentials certified. This means we’ve put measures in place to protect against a variety of common cyber attacks to protect our customers and our services. With our new password settings in place, customers can further enhance the internal security of their systems and data.

Find out more

For a full list of new features and updates in v4.8.2 including detailed descriptions, download our Changelog & Release Notes document by heading over to the Customer Zone.

If you require further assistance, please contact our friendly customer service team by emailing support@caredocs.co.uk or calling us on 0330 056 3333.

If you’re not currently a CareDocs customer and would like to book a free demonstration to see the features and benefits for yourself, click here.