A new hope: social prescribing in Cornwall

Last November I attended a 1-day event at the King’s Fund entitled ‘Social Prescribing: Coming of Age’. Why did I go? Gut feeling I suppose. I’m a GP in Cornwall with little understanding of social prescribing. But I do have history with the overdiagnosis group and I follow the mantra: winding back the harms of too much medicine. Local pain specialists and I have been on a mission to reduce Cornwall’s (high) levels of opioid prescribing. We’ve done handouts, contracts, sample letters, and videos (all open access if you’re interested),¹ for patients and clinicians. Everyone knows the risks of opioids for chronic pain and the lower the prescribing graph gets the more smug we become.