No abstract

The NICE Guidelines for Schizophrenia are designed to give guidance on the best practice in treatment and management of schizophrenia. These guidelines have 13 standards which services can use for the purpose of audit. As schizophrenia is our service's most common diagnosis, an audit against the guidelines was undertaken. The results indicated that we met three of the standards. Recommendations have been implemented to improve practice on standards that were not met, and this has led to some creative practice development. Despite the labour‐intensive nature of the audit, the results gave a clear indication of areas where there was a need for improvement and will act as a good baseline for re‐audit.

Aims and MethodTo develop standards for physical health monitoring in patients on antipsychotics in a forensic environment. We reviewed recommendations for physical health checks from key publications and then agreed a consensus on what to monitor and how often.ResultsWe developed a standardised form to ensure the requisite minimum monitoring is performed when a patient is newly prescribed an antipsychotic drug or the dose is increased, when an abnormality is detected and for routine annual physical health monitoring.Clinical ImplicationsWe have produced a pragmatic solution to the gap between the recognised risks to physical health of individuals treated with antipsychotic medication and the need for clear, unambiguous standards of physical healthcare.