Handling Refusal of Medicines as an Elder Care Advisor

If you are an elder care advisor working in Senior Housing you may run into clients who refuse their medication. If a client is unable to take their medication due to illness, refusal, or any other reason, you must report it immediately to the manager as well as the prescribing officer. Each client has the right to refuse their medications. This refusal must be recorded on the MAR sheet with the reason for refusal. The codes should be used in the client notes to depict the reason for refusal. These codes can be found in the local or organisational policy.

Clients are allowed to change their minds whether or not they previously gave consent. A competent adult can refuse treatment even against the advice of experienced health professionals or care workers. In the past whenever a client was no longer competent enough to give consent, health professionals and any care workers would have presumed they were able to act in the best interests of the client. This also assumed that if they client was unable to give consent they were also unable to make decisions. However, this is not true.

Prior to administering medication to an individual, you must have consent from the client. You have to respect the right of the client to determine what happens to their body. This is not just a fundamental component of good health practice but a legal requirement. You have to get consent to do anything from helping the individual get dressed to administering medication to them.

Competent adults have the right to refuse treatment even if health professionals have a different opinion. Remember, consent is not a one-off event, but rather, an on-going process and as such, service users are allowed to change their minds regardless of whether they previously provided consent.

You cannot crush tablet medication or open capsule medication. You should only consider covert administration of medicine, i.e. hiding medicine in drinks or food, as a last resort if and only if it is in the best interest of the client. The decision to administer medication in a covert fashion should be made by the general practitioner, pharmacist, care team, advocate, or other significant and relevant personnel. The decision should be documented thoroughly and should be reviewed habitually. Local and organisational policies should be considered as well when deciding to administer covert medication.

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Author is a social activist and Blogger in New York (USA). He has a great affection to elders and seniors and always writes articles about Elder Care Advisor. He has an extensive knowledge about Adult Residential Communities and Charlotte Memory Care . Contact him directly on (704) 249-7718.