Date
2018
Abstract
It is well-known that the demand for psychiatric care in the US is higher than the supply of psychiatric clinical providers. Vermont, in particular, has a paucity of psychiatric providers and there are minimal providers in Chittenden County and the greater Burlington area. Many patients with psychiatric conditions are inconsistently managed given the lack of available outpatient providers, particularly for patients on Medicaid. Often times, patients suffer from psychiatric episodes that require an emergency department visit or inpatient stay, and they may leave the hospital with an outpatient medication regimen that can then be carried out by a primary care provider. Patients should not have to endure a psychotic episode bringing them into the hospital in order to receive appropriate psychiatric care. A possible solution to this gap in care would be for primary care providers to be armed with the knowledge and skills to appropriately and sustainably manage psychiatric conditions on an outpatient level. Tools to summarize the evidence and current guidelines around prescribing, testing, surveillance, and other drug-related parameters may enable providers to quickly assess the recommendations during a busy clinical day, especially if such tools were consistently updated and embedded into the electronic medical record. This project focuses on management of mood disorders in the outpatient family medicine clinic; a "one-pager" table summarizing guidelines around commonly prescribed mood stabilizers in the setting of bipolar disorder was created and displayed in the Hinesburg Family Medicine clinic.
Clinical Site
Hinesburg Family Medicine
Keywords
Vermont, Bipolar disorder, Mood stabilizer, Psychiatry
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Disciplines
Medical Education | Primary Care
Recommended Citation
O'Neill, Elizabeth S., "Outpatient Management of Mood Disorders by the Family Physician" (2018). Family Medicine Clerkship Student Projects. 440.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/440