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Rapid tranquillisation: a questionnaire survey of practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Deborah Simpson  and
Ian Anderson
Deborah Simpson
Affiliation:
Rehabilitation Service, Harrop House, Prestwich Hospital Bury New Road, Prestwich, Manchester M25 3BC
Ian Anderson*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester Department of Psychiatry, Rawnsley Building, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9WL
*
∗ Correspondence
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A postal survey of the drug treatment of behavioural emergencies by senior registrars and consultants in psychiatry revealed that 90% would initially use a non-depot antipsychotic (including 24% who would combine it with a benzodiazepine if the situation warranted), and 10% the short-acting depot, zuclopenthixol acetate, with another antipsychotic or a benzodiazepine, or both. The choice was made from a restricted range of drugs, with haloperidol being the most popular antipsychotic and diazepam the most popular benzodiazepine. Half of respondents did not consider British National Formulary maximum dose recommendations to be useful for rapid tranquillisation and many would exceed them. A substantial minority did not consider that adequate resuscitation was available at their unit and deficiencies were revealed in the training of junior doctors and in the audit of rapid tranquillisation. Very few psychiatrists reported that their units had written guidelines.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , March 1996 , pp. 149 - 152
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, 1996

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