A parent has come home from hospital with new prescriptions

Lay everything out on the table

Put the new bag beside everything that was already in the house and go through both against the discharge summary, which should say what was started, what was changed and what was stopped. Do this on the first day, before the routine reasserts itself.

• Anything the summary says was stopped comes out of the cupboard now, into a separate bag
• Look for the same medicine twice under two names — a brand and a generic can sit side by side and be taken together
• Check whether a dose changed on something that was already being taken, and mark the old bottle
• Note which new medicines are short courses and which are for good

One call to the pharmacist, today

Take both lists — what came home and what was already there — to the pharmacist and ask them to go through it as a whole. Reconciling medicines after a hospital stay is a recognised part of the job, it is free, and a pharmacist will catch a duplicate or an interaction that nobody looking at one bag at a time would see.

Ask at the same time whether the hospital sent the prescriptions electronically or whether a paper one is still in the bag, and whether anything is going to run short before the follow-up appointment.

Find the follow-up and book it this week

The summary will name a follow-up — with the hospital team, the family doctor, or both — and a window for it. That appointment is where the new medicines get reviewed, so it wants booking while the discharge is fresh rather than when the reminder letter arrives.

Ask the family doctor’s office whether they have received the discharge summary. Often they have not, and a copy handed over in person saves a week of nobody knowing what changed.

The questions to ask while somebody is still answering the phone

• What changed, and why — in one sentence per medicine
• What to watch for in the first week, and what would mean calling
• Who to call after hours, with the actual number written down
• When the next dose of each new medicine is due, given the time of discharge
• Whether any prescription is for fewer days than the gap before the follow-up

What is yours to organise and what is not

Collecting, sorting and reordering are yours. Anything about the medicines themselves — new confusion or drowsiness, a fall, breathlessness, a parent who wants to stop something because of how it makes them feel — belongs with the doctor or the pharmacist, the same day. Do not adjust a dose or skip a new medicine to make the routine simpler; ask.