The use of illicit drugs, such as heroin or cocaine, is common. All GPs have a responsibility for providing general medical care to drug-using adults. GPs are ideally placed to identify drug misuse before it becomes problematic and to be able to intervene effectively.
Drug use is amenable to treatment, using a combination of psychological, social and medical interventions. Substitution treatment, such as the use of methadone, is effective and when properly administered results in improvements in social, medical and psychological functioning, and a reduction in criminal behaviour.
GPs must be familiar with ways of identifying excess alcohol consumption and aware of the morbidity (physical, psychological and social) caused by alcohol.
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These curriculum resources are regularly updated with relevant articles from our range of healthcare publications. All articles are reviewed by GP advisers. We have set the standard lifetime of an article at two years and will aim to renew all articles within that timeframe. However, some older articles will remain in the listing if our reviewers believe there to be no significant changes to the topic covered.
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