Familiarity of patient’s own medicines reduced confusion for the individual.

Self-medication increases patient’s knowledge and understanding of 
their medicines, it also encourages patients to take more responsibility
for their health.

Often patients have their own routine for taking their medicines; 
self-medication helps patients to stay as near to this routine as possible
and allows for re-education if their routine is incorrect.

Many medicines have to be taken at specific times related to food, to 
increase their effectiveness or to decrease side effects; e.g. flucloxacillin
is better absorbed if taken on an empty stomach and diclofenac is best
taken with food to avoid gastric irritation. Traditional drug rounds cannot
always accommodate these needs, but  self-medication and the use of
patient’s own drugs can.

Hospital resources are also wasted; the hospital pharmacy supply drugs
for the use on the ward and then supplies the same drugs for the patients
to take home. In many cases, the patients’ own supplies would have
sufficed.

Drug rounds take less time if patients are self-medicating; this means 
more quality nursing time can be spent with each patient.

At present, when patients bring their own medicines into hospital, in many
cases, medication is destroyed. This is a wasteful system for both the
patient and their General Practitioner (GP).

Obtaining discharge medication can involve lengthy waiting times (three
hours should be allowed for each discharge prescription). This is especially
so if the hospital pharmacy department is busy. If the patients have their
own supply of regular medicines, fewer will be needed when the patient
is discharged, decreasing the time taken for the discharge prescription
to be dispensed.