Development and evaluation of medication-focused training package for primary care pharmacy workforce for monitoring side-effects and inappropriate prescribing of psychotropic medications in adults with autism

This project is designed to address health inequalities which exist in people with serious mental disorders including adults/ageing population with autism, in line with The NHS Long Term Plan. In addition, this project aims to improve quality of care and increase access to health care professionals. Improving the care of adults with autism through patients’ involvement and training pharmacy workforce, will reduce health inequality, prevent potential harm from inappropriate prescribing and reduce visits to emergency department. Furthermore, the outcome of this project will contribute to literature in adults with autism, which is much under-researched compared with autism in children.

Development and evaluation of a medication-focused training package for the primary care pharmacy workforce for monitoring side-effects and inappropriate prescribing of psychotropic medications in adults with autism.

This project will develop practical tools, methods and training to protect people with autism from the impact of inappropriate prescribing of psychotropic medicines. This includes adverse effects associated with the use of psychotropics (people with autism are more sensitive to side-effects), drug interactions, inadequate monitoring and review. This project also has the potential to reduce the overuse of psychotropic drugs through the provision of training for primary care pharmacy professionals to develop competencies and confidence to identify and address these issues.

The aim is to design an assessment tool (a checklist) for detecting inappropriate prescribing and adverse effects in people with autism (to be used as part of routine SMR) and to design a relevant training package for pharmacy workforce (pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) throughout the NHS North East London (NEL) primary care. Service users will be involved from the beginning of this project since their experiences are valuable in development of the assessment tool as well as the contents of the training package. The proposed intervention will be piloted first. Participants will be asked to evaluate their experience. Pre-and post-intervention surveys will be conducted to evaluate the expected outcomes. The proposed programme will be modified to reflect the participants’ experience and then the programme will be rolled out throughout the NHS North East London primary care.