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Psychotropic Drugs: Another Survey of Prescribing Patterns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Roger Morgan
Affiliation:
St. Wulstan's Hospital, Malvern, Worcestershire
A. K. Gopalaswamy
Affiliation:
St. Wulstan's Hospital, Malvern, Worcestershire

Summary

We surveyed the psychotropic drug treatment of our hospital's 220 patients, and compared our findings with those of the only previous hospital survey in this country which showed much allegedly inappropriate prescribing. Using simple classifications of the patients' diagnoses and of the drugs prescribed, 30 per cent of our prescriptions appeared inappropriate in the absence of knowledge of the patients' symptoms. With such knowledge we show that only 2 of our 460 prescriptions were inappropriate.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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