This study shows that there is poor awareness of brain complications of diabetes among individuals with diabetes and the general population in Ireland. The results suggest a need for expansion of public awareness campaigns and diabetes education programmes to promote awareness of the brain complications of diabetes and of the modifiable risk factors for dementia, as part of a life-course approach to dementia prevention.

Our study highlights the need for education and training for Irish GPs on FTD assessment in the older people patient population.

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The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has accounted for more than 25,000 cases in Ireland with approximately 28% of the clusters in nursing homes as of June 2020. The older population is the most vulnerable to serious complications from this illness and over 90% of deaths due to COVID-19 to date have been in patients over the age of 65. Continuing to provide routine care within nursing homes in these challenging times is an essential part of ensuring that presentations to hospitals for non-essential reasons are minimized. In this article, we describe a project being undertaken by a rural Psychiatry of Old Age service in the north-west of Ireland. We aim to provide ordinary care in extraordinary times by using mobile tablets within the nursing homes and long-stay facilities in our region for remote video consultations during the COVID-19 crisis.

Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

This review highlights the importance of clinical information on prescriptions and that incomplete or poor documentation may contribute to prescribing errors. It also emphasises the importance of pharmacists in the identification and correction or resolution of potential prescribing errors. There is a need to develop a well-validated measure to assess the severity of prescribing errors that will better address their clinical significance and risk.

Background Antipsychotics (APs) increase weight, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Guidelines recommend cardio-metabolic monitoring at initial assessment, at 3 months and then annually in people prescribed APs. Aim To determine the rates of cardio-metabolic monitoring in AP treated early and chronic psychosis and to assess the impact of targeted improvement strategies. Methods Medical records were reviewed in two cohorts of first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients before and after the implementation of a physical health parameter checklist and electronic laboratory order set. In a separate group of patients with chronic psychotic disorders, adherence to annual monitoring was assessed before and 3 months after an awareness-raising educational intervention. Results In FEP, fasting glucose (39% vs 67%, p =0.05), HbA1c (0% vs 24%, p =0.005) and prolactin (18% vs 67%, p =0.001) monitoring improved. There were no significant differences in weight (67% vs 67%, p =1.0), BMI (3% vs 10%, p =0.54), waist circumference (3% vs 0%, p =1.0), fasting lipids (61% vs 76% p =0.22) or ECG monitoring (67% vs 67%, p =1.0). Blood pressure (BP) (88% vs 57%, p =0.04) and heart rate (91% vs 65%, p =0.03) monitoring dis-improved. Diet (0%) and exercise (<15%) assessment was poor. In chronic psychotic disorders, BP monitoring improved (20% vs 41.4%, p =0.05), whereas weight (17.0% vs 34.1%, p =0.12), BMI (9.7% vs 12.1%, p =1.0), fasting glucose (17% vs 24.3%, p =0.58) and fasting lipids remained unchanged (17% vs 24.3%, p =0.58). Conclusions Targeted improvement strategies resulted in a significant improvement in a limited number of parameters in early and chronic psychotic disorders. Overall, monitoring remained suboptimal.

Prescribing practices were not in keeping with consensus guidelines as highlighted by this relatively basic audit cycle. Multidisciplinary feedback and letters to GPs resulted in some reduction in the number of patients prescribed benzodiazepines and Z-drugs. Ongoing educational strategies aimed at relevant health care workers with regular audit of medication use within the general hospital setting is pertinent to further improve prescribing practice.