Improving physical health for people taking anti-psychotic medication in the Community Learning Disabilities Service (BMJ Quality)

Adherence with anti-psychotic monitoring guidelines is notoriously low nationally. Without active monitoring and measures to improve metabolic abnormalities, more patients may develop related morbidity and mortality. An audit highlighted anti-psychotic monitoring in this learning disability service in London did not match guideline recommendations. People with intellectual disability also experience health inequalities.

The QI team tested ideas to increase rates of anti-psychotic reviews. The focus was the follow up monitoring of all universal measures recommended by NICE 2014, collected at 2-weekly intervals. We trialled interventions in four broad categories; Intervention 1: to make monitoring more structured and planned; Intervention 2: to increase staff and patient awareness of healthy eating and exercise programs; Intervention 3: to increase the collection of diet and exercise histories from patients; Intervention 4: to improve the uptake of blood tests.

Please click the PDF to the left to read more about this ELFT QI Project published in BMJ Quality