DDNA Survey on Medication Management in Community Settings

01/20/10 -- 6:13 PM

Safe, effective medication management is a fundamental need - and a right – for persons with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (I/DD). In community-based service programs, medications for individuals with I/DD are often managed by unlicensed direct support personnel without standardized criteria or training and with little nursing involvement or oversight. This approach to medication management creates safety concerns for the person with I/DD and may place the nurse at risk for practicing outside the established standards of nursing care practice. Nurses are faced with vague and conflicting laws and regulations in community settings, which create barriers to safe medication management. Using a standardized approach to medication management can help assure safe medication administration for the person with I/DD and limit practice conflicts and liability for the nurse. To address this, DDNA has created a medication management task force to establish aspirational guidelines for medication management in community-based settings. The task force will be considering the following as it develops these guidelines: State Nurse Practice Acts and related statutes, related administrative codes and/or regulations; and prevailing service provider and agency practices. DDNA is seeking the input of ALL members on this very important issue. If you did not receive an email from DDNA on January 20th with a link to the medication management survey, please email admin@ddna.org and we will send you a survey form. Thanks to all for helping DDNA to gather this very important data.