Persuading general practitioners to prescribe--good husbandry or a recipe for chaos?

Edinburgh's Community Drug Problem Service was set up three years ago in response to the high prevalence of HIV infection amongst local injecting drug users and the lack of existing statutory drug services in Lothian. From the outset, a policy of shared care and substitute prescribing by the druguser's general practitioner (GP) was adopted. Over 800 referrals later, this discussion paper looks at the methods used to persuade GPs to cooperate in longterm drug management, and examines the advantages, disadvantages and outcome of such a shared care approach.