From Patrick Clancy's civil suit
64. The standard of care also required Dr. Tufts and Nurse Jollotta to assess and monitor a patient who had an unusual, unexpected or unfavorable reaction to medication, such as side effects or a lack of response. A simple way to do so was to order blood plasma levels of medication in order to determine whether the patient was a slow metabolizer, and thus more drastically impacted by a medication than she otherwise would be, or on the contrary, whether the medication simply was not working, either indicating that the patient might need a higher dose for it to be effective (if she was a fast metabolizer) or that the patient might have an underlying medical condition that needed to be treated. The standard of care required Dr. Tufts and Nurse Jollotta to look at the lab results in conjunction with the patient's symptoms in order to properly assess her condition. Indeed, the standard of care is to start low and go slow, meaning to begin a medication at a minimal level and slowly increase the dosage over time to allow the provider to better assess the impact of the drug upon the patient.
Question : For anyone here who has had similar experience in terms of having an adverse reaction to prescribed medication, is it typical for a psychiatrist/mental health provider to order for lab tests to be carried out immediately in this situation?
Acknowledgement : Thank you all for your answers! I’ve gained a substantial amount of knowledge regarding this subject matter so thanks again, much appreciated!