Increasingly, secondary care mental health services are moving towards a brief intervention model with expectation of follow-up in the community by any one of an assortment of community-based teams.
Future models for mental health pharmacy
Increasingly,
secondary care mental health services are moving towards a brief intervention
model with expectation of follow-up in the community by any one of an
assortment of community-based teams. For those admitted to crisis teams or
acute wards discharge back to more homely settings will be at the first
opportunity and with only partial treatment.
As described
earlier, full response to treatment may take some time but the sedative
effective of medicines may allow early discharge of a still largely unwell
person back into the community. Except for the period as an inpatient, the
supply of medicines will almost exclusively come from the community pharmacy.
Traditionally this supply of medicines has provided a demarcation of
responsibility for the pharmacy profession.
However, with the
development of clinical pharmacy, the expectation is that the community
pharmacist will have a greater clinical responsibility for the medicines
provided and the patient with mental health problems may access four services
that relate to medicines and where enhanced pharmacy services could have a
direct impact on the medicines prescribed. These are:
1. the community
pharmacy
2. the GP
3. the community
mental health team
4. the acute/crisis
services of the MHT or equivalent.
In addition to the
current hospital-based services, what might work better is dedicated mental
health specialist pharmacists or technicians using one of the following models:
·
employed by community pharmacy chains whose role is to
achieve the above in liaison with secondary care
·
employed by GP practices who, in addition to undertaking
roles relating to mental health within the GP practice, develop the role of the
community pharmacies that service the practice
·
employed by MHT community teams who, in addition to
undertaking roles relating to mental health within the community team, develop
the role of the community pharmacies that service the team’s catchment area.
Whatever model
develops, the requirement for well-trained mental health pharmacists and
technicians to ensure medicines are used well in mental health and LD and to
provide support for patients with their medicines will remain.
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