Side-Effect Monitoring for Patients on Depot Antipsychotic Medication Within a Community Treatment Team

AIMS: To determine whether the community treatment team (CTT) were meeting the following three trust standards for patients receiving antipsychotic depot medication: 1. 100% of patients should have side effects monitored using a validated scoring system in the form of the Glasgow Antipsychotic Side-effect Scale (GASS) once yearly. 2. 100% of patients should have had a GASS completed ever. 3. 100% of patients with a completed GASS should have this document available in full. Additionally adherence to these measures was compared to the previous year's audit to assess for change following interventions and change in documentation. METHODS: A list of 146 patients receiving antipsychotic depot medication within the CTT was produced and subsequently set up in a Microsoft excel spreadsheet. Exclusion criteria were then applied as follows: any patient no longer under the CTT, any patient no longer on depot antipsychotics and any patient admitted in hospital at the time of audit (to allow for comparison to previous year where this was applied.) Following this 127 patients remained for whom I accessed their online notes and searched for evidence of completed GASS, when this was completed and if the full completed form was available. Once these data were gathered percentage of completion was calculated for each of the three standards outlined above both overall and subsequently broken down by depot administration group. These results were then compared to the results of the previous year's audit. RESULTS: 1. In this audit 66% of patients had received a GASS in the previous year compared to 53% previously. 2. In this audit 97% of patients had a completed GASS ever compared to 95% previously. 3. In this audit 99% of patients with a completed GASS had the full document available compared to 98% previously. 4. Additionally significant variation between depot administration groups was identified ranging from 17% completion to 100% completion. CONCLUSION: It is clear the standards of 100% completion of GASS yearly are not being met however there was notable improvement following previous intervention suggesting this was beneficial and further interventions have been put in place including, but not limited to, supply of a spreadsheet with up to date list of when patients are due a repeat GASS for future tracking to further improve adherence to standards.