Following the publication of England’s Chief Medical Officer’s open letter about prescribing of cannabis-based products, we have written to her to raise our concerns regarding the mention of shared care prescribing and the potential pressure on GPs to prescribe outside their area of competence or contractual obligations. In response to our letter she said that the current legal position is that although the law allows these to be prescribed by GPs on the direction of a specialist ‘the concerns of your colleagues around potential pressures on GPs to prescribe outside of their competence or contractual obligations are entirely valid ones. Healthcare professionals should never feel pressured to prescribe. NHS England and I published a letter on cannabis-based products for medicinal use on the 31st of October which mentions that in the first instance we expect specialist prescribing only.’
Please do let us know if you become aware of any problems by emailing info.gpc@bma.org.uk. The BMA has also published some Q&As to explain what these changes mean.