Mentally ill patients inadequately monitored for adverse effects
Patients prescribed psychotropic medicines are often inadequately screened or monitored for adverse effects, the National Patient Safety Agency has warned in a report.
It has also commented that drugs prescribed to treat mental illness are
a factor in many deaths from poisoning and that less toxic drugs should
be prescribed for people at risk of suicide.
“Clinicians often fail to screen and monitor for the adverse effects
of psychotropic medication,” the NPSA report says. “In one
study, only just over 40 per cent of people prescribed antipsychotic
medication
had been tested for diabetes, despite them being at much higher risk
of this condition than the general population.” As a result, numbers
of patients were likely to have untreated diabetes that had been induced
by their treatment with antipsychotic drugs.
The agency says that this type of patient safety incident is likely to
be under-reported, both locally and through the National
Reporting and Learning System, since the responsibility to monitor patients lies with
medical staff, who make little use of the reporting system.
“The potential seriousness is underlined by the fact that failure
to adequately monitor antipsychotic medication is the single most common
cause of claims
relating to mental health services notified to the National Health Service
Litigation Authority,” the report says. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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