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Swallowing Pills Advice

Checked: 02-08-2024 by Rob Adams Next Review: 02-08-2026

Overview

Kidzmed is a programme developed to help families to teach children and young people how to swallow pills using a simple six-step technique. It was set up at the Great North Children’s Hospital, Newcastle, and has won the NHS Sustainability Award, the HSJ Value Award for Pharmacy and Optimisation and the Bright Ideas in Health Award for Demonstrating an Impact upon Quality Improvement. 

Why are swallowing pills better than liquid medicines?

Swallowing pills are better:

  • For children and young people: pills are less sickly, contain less sugar and children who swallow pills tend to have less problems taking their medicines
  • For carers: pills have a longer shelf-life, do not need to be kept in a fridge, are easier to carry around and more readily available in local pharmacies
  • For pharmacists: pills are more commonly stocked in local pharmacies compared to suspensions and cheaper

Swallowing pills is an important life skill for children to learn, for the reasons above, and because most medicines are in pill form.

Parent Leaflets

Please see the link below for leaflets and top tips:

Swallowing pills (Kidzmed) :: North East and North Cumbria Healthier Together (nenc-healthiertogether.nhs.uk)



Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.