Administration of depot injections

Discussion
1

I am enquiring whether other areas are willing to share their best practice guidance and/or protocol regarding administration of a depot injection to someone who lives in the community.

Historically as a service in North Wales we have encouraged with support where required to access generic services as anyone else in the community ie CMHT out patient clinic, Home Treatment Teams and/or GP surgery or Practice Nurse administering the depot injection. However, with so much pressure on all community services within health there appears to be differing points of view:- some GP’s willing to take on the responsibility along as a Learning Disability Community Nurse is monitoring on a regular basis, recently a number of CMHT’s and Home Treatment teams with Mental Health Services have declined to administer explaining that as qualified nurses Learning Disability services should be taking the lead

I have my own personal views on this matter but am interested in what other areas are practicing and whether they face similar difficulties

2

HI

I work in SE Wales and the Service Users in LD would just access generic services at GP’s. I don’t think that the Community LD nurses provided depot injections. If there were particular issues, then they could be supported to attend the GP surgery by a Community LD nurse. As most people either live with family, in residential or supported living, they would in most cases attend a generic service but with their support worker. However, as I am currently on secondment from the LD team to the CMHT, I can see that this differs with CPN’s giving depot injections in the community as well as some people coming into Outpatients appointment at the CMHT for depot’s.

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