Drugs for dementia: the first year. An audit of prescribing practice.

In March 1998 the Department of Health and Social Services issued prescribing guidelines for the use of drugs for dementia. A criterion based audit of 202 consecutive cases was undertaken over one year which showed that the prescribing guidelines in general were being followed. A small number of patients, 3, were prescribed the drugs outside the guidelines and most failures, 10, were due to poor recording of data in the clinical record. Despite the recommendation of the DHSS no agreed shared care protocols have been implemented but this does not seem to have affected access to these drugs. As a result of this audit changes have been made with regard to documentation of patient assessments and suggestions made to review Clinical Resource Efficiency Support Team (CREST) guidelines.