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Use of high dose antipsychotic medication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Graeme Yorston*
Affiliation:
DMHE Community Team, South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust, Shrubbery Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire HP13 6PS
Alison Pinney
Affiliation:
Amersham Hospital, Whielden Street, Amersham, Bucks HP7 0JD
*
Correspondence
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Abstract

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An audit of antipsychotic prescribing was carried out on community and in-patient samples. A novel method of expressing total daily antipsychotic dose as a percentage of the British National Formulary maximum recommended dose was used. Of 226 patients who had been prescribed antipsychotics, 16 (7%) were found to be on high closes. Their medical notes were examined to ascertain whether the Royal College of Psychiatrists guidelines were being followed. Recommendations on ways in which practice could be improved were made and a re-audit was carried out. The number of patients receiving high doses fell to 6 (3%) out of 206.

Type
Audit
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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