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How to change prescribing of hypnotics

The North Wales Hospital

L. Tudor, Medical Audit Administrator

The North Wales Hospital, Denbigh, Clwyd LL16 5SS

This paper charts the progress of a continuing audit cycle of prescribing of hypnotics in a psychiatric hospital. First we reviewed some possible standards from the literature, then educated the prescribing doctors, and fed back to them their own patterns of prescribing. We present the results of this exercise repeated over 18 months; these show a change and general improvement in prescribing patterns. Finally we discuss some of the motivations and possible mechanisms behind these changes, and the implications for the audit process in general.