Psychiatry is a unique speciality in that use of medications is required for most diagnoses, often from a young age and for long periods of time. Combinations of medications are frequently required to reduce symptoms, improve quality of life, and facilitate community care.
Polypharmacy – or the regular use of several medicines - is common among people living with mental ill-health. This happens due to a person’s need to be treated with medication, but also due to frequent physical health difficulties which the person is also experiencing and a common need to manage the side effects of medication. Therefore, psychiatric medication management is complex; it requires specialist input by many different healthcare professionals for optimal care.
Having specialist pharmacists on multidisciplinary teams within psychiatric settings has been demonstrated to improve many outcomes, rooted in the safe and evidence-based prescribing and monitoring of medications. This comes through the unique knowledge, skillset and position of pharmacists and pharmacy professionals who can work with and educate colleagues to optimise all aspects of medication management.
As part of its medication safety initiative, our Pharmacy Department regularly issues a medication safety newsletter. The newsletter is developed by both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians within the department.
The main aim of the newsletter is to enhance care of service users by reducing preventable medication incidents and enhancing the medication safety culture within SPMHS. It also aims to encourage a proactive, preventative approach to medication safety through increased awareness of risks, contributing factors, and error prevention strategies. In addition, the newsletter is intended to enhance collaborative working between pharmacy professionals and other disciplines.
You can find the latest issues of the medication safety newsletter below.
