They're discharging Mum on Friday and I still don't know what I'm supposed to do about her tablets

#1Lorna B.(Joined Feb 2026 · 8 posts)April 14, 2026, 10:18 pm

Friday. Three days away. She has been in nearly a fortnight and she is going home to my house rather than hers, which is its own thing, but the part keeping me awake is the tablets.

She went in on four. She is coming out on nine, two of which are new, one of which has been stopped and then apparently restarted, and one of which is a different colour to the one she had before and I do not know whether that is the same thing or a different thing. Nobody has sat down with me about any of it. The nurse today said "it will all be in the discharge letter" in a tone that suggested this was a complete answer.

I have never been responsible for anyone else's medicines in my life. What if I give her one twice. What if she misses one and I do not notice until the evening. What if the pharmacy does not have them. I am forty three and I have a job and I have suddenly got three days to become a person who can do this.

What do I need to have in my hand before we leave that ward on Friday? Please be specific, I am past the point of general reassurance.

#2tomsdaughter(Joined Jan 2025 · 31 posts)April 15, 2026, 7:31 am

A complete list of everything she is on, on paper, in your hand, before you leave. Not "it will be in the letter". Ask for it as a list and do not go home without it.

#3dee1972(Joined Apr 2025 · 24 posts)April 15, 2026, 12:44 pm

The thing that saved me was going through the list with a pharmacist rather than a doctor, and I only worked that out about a year in.

No appointment, no waiting list, walked into the community pharmacy with the discharge letter and the bag of boxes and asked her to go through what each one was for. She spent twenty minutes on it, told me which two were the same drug under two names, which is exactly the mess you are describing with your different coloured one, and spotted that the letter had one item on it that was not in the bag. Twenty minutes, free, no appointment. I had spent three weeks trying to get a GP call back for the same question.

Also, and I wish somebody had told me on day one: write down what each one is FOR. Not what it is called and not how much. What it is for. When something goes wrong six weeks later and you are on the phone to somebody who has never met her, "the one for her blood pressure" gets you further than reading out a name you cannot pronounce.

#4Maura KinsellaAdmin(Joined Sep 2024 · 168 posts)April 15, 2026, 5:02 pm

Lorna, I am going to answer this as a list of things to ask for, because that is what you asked for and because I stood exactly where you are standing in 2022 with a sheet of A4 and eleven abbreviations on it.

Before you leave the ward, four questions, and I would write them on the back of your hand.

What should make me ring, and how quickly. Not "if you are worried". Ask what specific changes mean today rather than next week, for her in particular.

Who do I ring out of hours. Get an actual number, written down, for the nights and the weekend, before you need it. In the UK that is her GP surgery in hours and NHS 111 out of hours, with 999 for the emergencies. Ireland is the GP out of hours service, 112 or 999 for an emergency. In the United States it is her own doctor's office or the nurse line her plan runs, with urgent care as the fallback and 911 for an emergency. Australia is healthdirect on 1800 022 222 and 000. Canada is the provincial health line, 811 in most provinces, and 911. Her own clinician first wherever you are, because they hold the notes and they know what she was like a fortnight ago.

What has been referred, to whom, and how will I know it has happened. Referrals go missing quietly and nobody rings to tell you one did not arrive.

And what is each medicine for. Dee is exactly right and it is the single most useful thing on this page.

Now the specific medicines part. You are entitled to a complete list of her medicines when she transfers from hospital to home, and the guideline that covers discharge in England, NICE NG27, says that information and that list should be given to the person and, where appropriate, to their family and carers. So asking for it is not being difficult, it is asking for the thing the process is supposed to produce. Two more from the same guideline that are worth knowing on Friday. The discharge summary is supposed to reach the GP within 24 hours, with a copy to her on the day she leaves, so if her surgery says they have nothing on Monday that is chaseable rather than normal. And there should be a single named person coordinating the discharge, who is your central point of contact. Ask who that is by name.

Two warnings about the list itself, because this is where the damage happens. Compare the printed list to the actual boxes in the bag, item by item, before you drive home, because the commonest failure in this whole subject is a change made in hospital that nobody wrote down or a change written down that nobody made. And if something was stopped and restarted, ask specifically whether it is on the list at the same dose as before, and get the answer from the ward rather than from your own reading of the letter.

On the two things frightening you at half past ten at night. If a dose is missed, you record what was missed and when, and then you ring and ask. There is no general catch up rule that is safe to publish and anything online offering you one is describing a single medicine and generalising. Nobody on this site, me included, will ever tell you a dose or a dose change. That belongs to the prescriber and the pharmacist. What belongs to you is the system around the tablets: the ordering cycle, the timing, one accurate list, noticing when something changes, and knowing how to ask for a review.

And that last one has a name worth using. If nine items from four feels like a lot to you, it may well be, but the request is for a structured medication review, which is what NICE NG5 calls it and what a pharmacist or a GP will recognise. Ask for deprescribing and you may get a blank look, because there is no NICE guideline by that name. It is not something to do on Friday. It is something to put in the diary for a few weeks' time once the dust settles.

Coming home from hospital has the full discharge day list and managing someone else's medication covers the round, the ordering cycle, blister packs and their trade offs, and refusals. Read the first one before Friday and the second one next week.

One last thing, and it is the one I would want said to me. If the plan being handed to you assumes you can do things you cannot do, say so before the date is set, and ask for it to be recorded. That statement has standing. Nobody will ask you the question, and it gets much harder to raise once she is in your spare room.

#5K. McAllister(Joined Nov 2025 · 11 posts)April 16, 2026, 3:20 pm

From the US side, since the mechanics differ but the failure point does not. Ours came home with a printed list too and it had a medicine on it that had been stopped on day three of the admission. Nobody had updated it. We caught it because the pharmacist queried the interaction, not because anybody on the ward checked.

So Maura's line about comparing the list to the boxes is not a nice extra. Do it in the car park if you have to.

#6Lorna B.(Joined Feb 2026 · 8 posts)April 20, 2026, 8:55 pm

She is home. Four days in and I am shattered but nothing has gone wrong yet, so I will take it.

What I did on Friday: asked for the list, got it after about an hour of asking three different people, checked it against the bag in the day room and found one thing in the bag that was not on the list. Which turned out to be something she had been on for years and which nobody had put on because it was not a hospital thing. So not a disaster, but I would never have known to ask.

Got the out of hours number. Got the name of the discharge coordinator, who I have already rung once. Did not get anybody to explain what things were for, so I did what Dee said and took the letter and the bag into the pharmacy on Saturday morning and she went through the whole lot with me at the counter. Nine items, twelve minutes, and I now have a sheet in my own handwriting saying what each one is for.

Nobody has rung to check on us, which I gather is supposed to happen in the first few days. Ringing the surgery about that in the morning.

Thank you all. I was in a genuine panic on Tuesday night.