Training for GPs to identify and treat patients misusing drugs

A SURGE in drug and alcohol misuse among people at home has forced GPs to take up urgent training to cope with distraught families.

A raft of courses are lined up for GPs, starting next month, to help identify and treat patients misusing drugs, increasingly arriving at their surgery doorsteps.

Doctors will not only focus on identifying and responding to patients abusing prescribed drugs and alcohol but people misusing other substances such as tranquillisers, cocaine and cannabis.

The Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) is rolling out the expanded educational programme on substance misuse, directly in response to GPs’ concerns.

Dr Ide Delargy, the ICGP’s Drug Misuse Programme director, explained: “They [GPs] are increasingly being asked in surgeries to help with substance abuse problems with family members, partners, teenagers, siblings and parents. Where 10 years ago training was opiate or methadone-related, this training will also focus on other drugs like tranquillisers, cocaine and cannabis use.”

The training for GPs, their staff and nurses will begin on February 20 in Galway, with similar programmes planned in May for Tullamore and in November for Monaghan.

More than 250 GPs are expected to attend the one-day programmes.

Training will focus on boosting GPs skills identifying cocaine users through mood disturbances, complaints of anxiety and depression. GPs will be trained to look out for clues including occupational related issues, where patients continuously request sick notes for work, especially after weekends.

“With cocaine, GPs should look out for chest pain complaints, cardiac problems or extreme weight loss. With cannabis, it may be why medications are not working with respiratory complaints. Users can present in a variety of ways,” added Dr Delargy.

GPs have reported a variety of backgrounds and professions among families caught up in drug misuse.

In one case, four children of a mother, aged just 28, have been taken into care. The young parent is battling problems not only with opiates and cocaine use but also prescribed drugs. She has attempted suicide several times and been in and out of psychiatric units, having also spent time coping with depression in hospital. But a GP is trying to stop her children misusing drugs now. Already, one of her children, 16, is in the criminal justice system.

In another case, a family tried to get a father off addictive substances. His son arranged for him to visit clinics in the UK and Europe. However the father took his own life.

“We [the college] have seen a doubling of inquiries about the misuse of substances in recent years and on the back of the recent scandals with cocaine, colleagues want help,” added Dr Delargy.

According to the ICGP, doctors are seeing patients not only abusing drugs in pubs or nightclubs, but also increasingly in domestic settings.

“They’re doing it in their own homes. They spend a huge quantity on drugs being delivered,” said the college’s director.

www.icgp.ie