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The frequency of prescribing of neuroleptic drugs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Mark Hughson
Affiliation:
Leverndale Hospital, Glasgow G53 7TU
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The frequency with which a given drug is prescribed (the number of doses per day) should be influenced by several factors. First, frequent prescribing is likely to be more expensive and to consume more resources. About a third of the time spent by psychiatric nurses in interaction with patients is devoted to technical activities such as drug administration (Altschul, 1972). Second, it is especially difficult to persuade psychiatric patients to take medication as prescribed whether as in-patients or as out-patients so treatment regimens should be kept as simple as possible. There is evidence that compliance is better with once or twice daily regimens than with a four times daily regimen.

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 © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

Altschul, A. T. (1972) Patient-nurse Interaction: A study of interaction patterns in acute psychiatric wards. Edinburgh & London: Churchill Livingstone.Google Scholar
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Kendell, R. E. (1988) Schizophrenia. In Companion to Psychiatric Studies (eds Kendell, R. E. & Zealley, A. K.). Edinburgh & London: Churchill Livingstone.Google Scholar
Royal College of Psychiatrists (1989) Working Party of the Royal College of Psychiatrists: preliminary report on medical audit. Psychiatric Bulletin, 13, 577580.Google Scholar
Smith, T. (1990) Medical audit. Closing the feedback loop is vital. British Medical Journal, 300, 65.Google Scholar
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