Interprofessional and intraprofessional communication about older people’s medications across transitions of care

Abstract

Communication breakdowns contribute to medication incidents involving older people across transitions of care. The purpose of this paper is to examine how interprofessional and in-traprofessional communication occurs in managing older patients’ medications across transitions of care in acute and geriatric rehabilitation settings. An ethnographic design was used with semi-structured interviews, observations and focus groups undertaken in an acute tertiary referral hospital and a geriatric rehabilitation facility. Communication to manage medications was influenced by the clinical context comprising the transferring setting (preparing for transfer), receiving setting (setting after transfer) an..