Authors of a 2014 review paper about the use of “as needed” medications by people with mental health diagnoses are retracting it, but we’re scratching our heads as to why.
The retraction appears in “The experiences of mental health professionals’ and patients’ use of pro re nata (PRN) medication in acute adult mental health care settings: a systematic review protocol of qualitative evidence,” published by The JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports.
From the abstract of the paper:
Pro re nata is a Latin phrase meaning “for an unforseen need or contingency”…The authors of the systematic review found that although the practice of using “as required” medication is common there is no good evidence of whether this is the best way of helping people to be less agitated when compared to being given a regular dose of medication.
We’re not entirely sure what went wrong here. This is the full contents of the note:
This article has been retracted at the request of Morkunas B, Porritt K, and Stephenson M.
Reason: Our manuscript unintentionally failed to meet academic and publication standards
Apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
We emailed the journal and the corresponding author, Bernadette Morkunas at the University of Adelaide in Australia, to ask exactly what happened. We’ll update if we hear back.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
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Weird: on this page there’s a slightly different retraction note:
“This article has been retracted following a review by the Editorial Board.
Reason: Our manuscript unintentionally failed to meet academic and publication standards.”
This abstract/background is a tad peculiar… The author appears to have cited all of their relevant sources, but they did not bother to fully reword some of their information. It comes across as lazy. I did not think you could do this without quotes? Here are just a few of several examples I noticed:
1. From the article-
[…] interviewees highlighted the value of “as needed” medications. The process that was associated with their use was, however, perceived as confusing and stigmatising. Service users had limited understanding of the process and felt unsupported in their attempts to use alternative approaches[15]
[…] nurses should take into account the issues of power and control when administering “as needed” medication and that the provision of adequate treatment information should be a priority to enable informed choices to be made about this form of medication [15]
These phrases were very similar to those in the abstract of their source:
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17042815)
“Interviewees highlighted the value of ‘as needed’ medications. However, the process associated with their use was perceived as confusing and stigmatizing. Service users had limited understanding of and felt unsupported in attempts to use alternatives approaches”
“Nurses should take account of the issues of power and control when administering ‘as needed’ medication. The provision of adequate treatment information should be a priority to enable informed choices to be made about this form of medication.”
2. From the article-
from the perspective of patients, interactions surrounding the immediate administration of PRN medication were inadequate, in that half of the interviewees were simply told to take the medication and three quarters said that, in their experience, formal consent was not properly sought.[14]
From abstract of the source:
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22583694)
“From the perspective of patients, interactions surrounding the immediate administration of PRN medication were inadequate, in that half of the interviewees were simply told to take the medication, and three-quarters said that, in their experience, formal consent was not commonly sought.
3. From the article-
Six major themes emerged from that review: frequency of administration, administration during the 24-hour day, administration associated with length and stage of admission, rationales for administration, medicines administered (including route of administration), effects and side-effects of medicines administered.
From abstract of the source:
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18416789)
Results: “Six major themes emerged from the literature: (i) frequency of administration; (ii) administration during the 24-hour day; (iii) administration associated with length and stage of admission; (iv) rationales for administration; (v) medicines administered (including route of administration); and (vi) effects and side effects of the medicines administered.”