Medication Policy: Medication Handling

Your policies must also be clear that staff, volunteers or leaders must never handle resident medication.  Staff may observe as residents handle their own medication, but they may not do it for them.  This means recovery housing staff should not be going to pick up medication from the pharmacy or deliver medications to residents.

It is best practice to reinforce this in the staff Code of Conduct to ensure understanding.

If residents are receiving some sort of medication support at a treatment center, be sure to have appropriate releases of information with the treatment center, and communicate with the treatment team about any support that is needed at the recovery home.  Remember, recovery housing is a housing setting, and it must be separate from the treatment services.