The 2014 Act came into effect in July 2014. It introduced new principles to support people experiencing mental illness to make and participate in treatment decision (shared decision making) and to have their views and preferences considered and respected.
PDAS provides patient-focused clinical advice to various healthcare providers to optimise the safe and efficacious use of psychotropic medicines.
Enquiries received can range from relatively simple, straightforward questions about a medicine to more complex clinical scenarios.
PDAS can help interpret current literature and contemporary best practice guidelines to provide medicines information and assist or support clinicians with medication decision-making.
Some sample types of enquiries:
- Medication identification e.g. international medications or clinical trial medications.
- Treatment resistance e.g. what medicine(s) may be appropriate when my patient has not responded or tolerated a number of previous medications?
- Physical or medical comorbidities e.g. are any psychotropic medications contraindicated? Are the psychotropic medications implicated in developing or worsening a particular medical condition?
- Medication interactions (including psychotropic medicines, physical health medicines, illicit substances, complementary and herbal medications).
- Investigation and management of medication related side effects e.g. my patient is reporting a medication adverse effect and is there a relationship with the medicine(s) they are taking?
- Direction to recent guidelines or evidence to promote best practice.
- Medication monitoring (including plasma drug levels, metabolic monitoring and/or pharmacogenomics).