Appropriate Use of Antipsychotics in Long-Term Care Toolkit

This Action Series centres on a toolkit, based around eight key elements that will help your LTC home identify strengths and opportunities focusing on the appropriate use of antipsychotics,
and improve the quality of life for the residents, family and staff who live and work there. Your care home starts with completing a self-assessment, which will help you prioritize quality of life improvements to try and test, then collect data to understand if you have made an improvement and, finally, implement your ideas based on that information.

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Step 1 – ASSESS

Review and rate how often each key element is used in practice in your LTC home
by completing the self-assessment. The results of the self-assessment helps
you prioritize actions towards the appropriate use of antipsychotics to manage
behaviours. The goal is to identify improvements that your care home can
then embed as sustainable practices in your day-to-day operations to reduce
unnecessary medications in a safe manner, when appropriate, and to monitor your
progress every six months.

Begin Your Self-Assessment

Step 2 – MAKE CHANGES

Use the AUA in LTC Improvement Guide to prioritize one to two quality of life
improvements. Choose only one or two areas so you know whether your changes
have resulted in an improvement! Use the templates in the AUA in LTC Improvement
Guide to develop and document a monthly workplan based on your priority area(s).

Step 3 – MEASURE CHANGES

Measurement is an essential part of improvement. Your data needs to accurately
reflect what is happening at the care home level. Use the template provided in the
AUA in LTC Improvement Guide to document your measurement plan that includes
what data to monitor related to the appropriate use of antipsychotics. This helps your
care home keep track of whether changes are leading to improvements over time.

Step 4 – RE-ASSESS AND REPEAT

Continue the improvement journey! Reassess every six months (minimum), work
through the steps again and update your priorities and templates accordingly.
The goal is to improve your rating for each key element until you reach a score of
6 for each one and your care home is able to maintain that score consistently with
sustainable practices and processes embedded in day-to-day operations.

Discover What Key Elements Will Help Your LTC Home

Start your self-assessment now and begin your prioritize actions towards the appropriate use of antipsychotics to manage behaviours.

Begin Your Self-Assessment