Physical health assessment and cardiometabolic monitoring practices across three adult mental health inpatient units – a retrospective cohort study

Australians with lived experience of mental illness die on average 10 or more years earlier than the general population. Cardiometabolic disorders, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus, are common causes of premature death in this cohort. Little is known about cardiometabolic monitoring practices in mental health inpatient units. The aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of cardiometabolic monitoring and physical health assessments of adult mental health consumers within the first 72 hours of admission to an inpatient unit. We implemented a retrospective descriptive exploratory design by medical record audit. Data were collected using a pre-validated audit tool, adapted with recent literature and policy, from a randomly selected sample of consumers admitted to three acute mental health adult inpatient units of a large Australian metropolitan health service in 2016. Of 228 consumers, the mean age was 37.5 (range 18-64) years and 51.3% were women. Cardiometabolic risks were common, yet most consumers received incomplete cardiometabolic monitoring. While few consumers (15%) were diagnosed with cardiometabolic comorbidities, 67.5% were prescribed psychotropic medications with high cardiometabolic risk. Compliance with recommended cardiometabolic monitoring varied considerably between risk factors: for example, blood pressure was measured in 56.1% of consumers, whereas waist circumference was never recorded. There were no statistically significant associations between cardiometabolic monitoring completion and sex or cardiometabolic risk. These findings demonstrate the need for increased education and awareness of cardiometabolic risk and identify a critical gap between physical health assessment practices and recommendations for this cohort.