Member for Oxley Melinda Pavey has worked together with Bundaleer Care Services to successfully lobby the NSW Government to make important changes to legislation to ensure the ongoing care and quality of life for aged-care residents in the State.
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Clinical Governance, Quality and Research manager at Bundaleer, Karen Slater, claims the change in legislation will improve the care for residents.
"Under the NSW Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation from 2008, we couldn't legally hold emergency medications at Bundaleer Gardens Hostel because prior to July 1, 2014 all of the beds were classified with low care bed licences," Ms Slater said.
"But as you can imagine, a lot can happen in almost five years, and with ageing in place now over 75 per cent of our residents are classified as high care through the Aged Care Funding Instrument."
The Pharmaceutical Branch of NSW Health enforce that previous low care Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs) come under the same legislation as the community sector, which states medicines can only be supplied to a resident on a prescription from the GP, and therefore there is no legislation that allows low care RACFs to keep emergency S4 and S8 drugs or antibiotics.
"The situation was impacting on our registered nurses (RNs) ability to provide appropriate care to our residents by not being able to hold appropriate supplies of palliative care drugs, for example, morphine and a range of antibiotics to allow early intervention in the treatment of infections, such as, urinary tract, respiratory and wound infections. So, if a resident develops an infection or requires palliative care on a Friday night, our RNs do not have access to S8 drugs or antibiotics that would alleviate our resident's pain and suffering, which as you can imagine was just not good enough," Ms Slater said.
"This week we received a letter from The Hon. Brad Hazzard, MP - Minister for Health and Minister for Medical Research advising that in response to the request from Bundaleer Care Services he has made changes to the Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation 2008 to now allow all NSW Residential Care Homes approved under the Commonwealth Aged Care Act of 1997 to hold a range of urgent usemedications.
"The medications include oral antibiotics and end of life treatments and are for use whilst awaiting the residents own supply being obtained from a retail pharmacy and means that our residents can now receive vital medications without delay relieving unnecessary pain and suffering."
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