Arranged

An 0800 meeting this morning. Of the group overseeing an audit of prescribing of antipsychotics.

The audit arose out of the concerns of patients and their whanau (family and friends) that they were being prescribed too much antipsychotic medication. A body called the Programme Board decided that our DHB services should change this. I was given the task of leading the steering group. 

The first thing I did (nearly two years ago now) was to reframe the issue into one that could be answered; how often are these medications prescribed in doses above the recommended maximum doses in the New Zealand formulary? We were fortunate that one of our pharmacists had done a small survey a year before, and we had evidence that there is a problem, and so an audit was planned to measure the size of the problem.

Much of last year was spent sorting how to do it,  which parts of the service would we audit, how many patients, and who would do the audit. The last question was the hardest until five pharmacy students in need of a project were happy to do a literature search and follow up with a full scale audit. 

Today we reviewed the presentation they will make to our psychiatrists at a meeting on Monday. It is a very impressive and important piece of work.

Thereafter my day was meetings interspersed with desk clearing work. Got home not too late, but wasn't keen on heading out again, so I chose to create a "found poem". I chose six books almost randomly off the shelf above my desk in the study. To create a pile for the photograph, I decided that they should be in order of increasing height of the book, with the tallest on the bottom. 

My found poem is entitled Order of height


This changes
               everything
The unconscious
               civilisation
The uses of pessimism
Archetypal psychology     Embracing
mind
Voices
               of madness