How does a standardized care plan facilitate the practice of pharmaceutical care planning in mental health settings...

The aim of the project was to understand how a standardized generic pharmaceutical care plan could facilitate the practice of mental health pharmacy care planning across Scotland. Specifically, the objectives were to examine whether the plan was easy to use, collected appropriate information and enabled communication on discharge; when the plan was used in relation to multidisciplinary meetings; how useful it was to other team members; whether it changed the way pharmacists worked; and who wrote in the plan. A further objective was to examine whether there were barriers to implementing the plan and how these may be overcome.

A piloted questionnaire and diary were completed by practising pharmacists, asking them to describe their use of the generic care plan. Mental health pharmacists throughout Scotland used the care plans with adult, elderly and forensic mental health inpatients over the 2 month period.

Forty-four mental health pharmacists participated (69.84% of practising mental health pharmacists across Scotland). They used the plan with 241 adult, 70 elderly and 16 forensic mental health patients. Many sections of the plan received positive appraisal, but changes were also widely recommended. Changes were on three levels: (1) additions or deletions to individual sections of the care plan, some of which may reflect local circumstances, (2) more radical deletions or changes to entire sections or pages and (3) to take into account the wider social and political context in which pharmacists work, with the potential for local rates of progress towards national imperatives, such as multidisciplinary working.

The development of a standardized care plan for mental health pharmacists should address policy issues and could enhance the role of the pharmacist within multidisciplinary teams.