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Six years' experience of sharing the care of Edinburgh's drug users

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Judy Greenwood
Judy Greenwood*
Affiliation:
Community Drug Problem Service, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh EH10 5HF
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Abstract

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Six yean ago, Edinburgh's community drug problem service established a model of shared care between drug specialists and general practitioners who were encouraged to prescribe oral methadone and other drug substitutes in an attempt to reduce drug injecting and the spread of HIV in a city with a high seroprevalence rate. Of Edinburgh's GPs, 70% now prescribe for around 1200 drug users who have altered their pattern of drug taking, with a marked shift away from injecting drug use, and towards oral pharmaceutical drugs. HIV rates among new referrals to the service have fallen from 21% to 8%.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 8 - 11
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1996

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