The doctors' mess has always been an integral part of medical culture. It stems back to the days when doctors were on duty for long hours, but not necessarily actually working. Therefore, they had to have somewhere where they could retreat while waiting to be called. It was always a haven of relative tranquillity where you could take your break away from the wards. The New Deal (NHS Management Executive, 1991) says that there is supposed to be a doctors' mess away from clinical areas, separate from any dining room. In this day and age of shifts, some would argue that the mess is an anachronism. However, there is still a place for it.
Most doctors are familiar with the concept of taking a patient's drug history on admission. Medicines reconciliation is about obtaining up-to-date, accurate and reliable information on patients' medication. According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the National Patient Safety Agency (2007), in their joint guidance, ‘the aim… is to ensure that medicines prescribed on admission correspond to those that the patient was taking before admission’. This is an important aspect of patient safety, so that patients receive all the correct medication, with none omitted and nothing additional administered by mistake. Medicines reconciliation has the potential to reduce medication errors (National Prescribing Centre, 2008).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.