Shared Care arrangements allow a drug to be initiated by a hospital clinician before prescribing responsibility and ongoing monitoring is taken over by the patients own GP.

Patients must first be stabilised on their treatment before responsibility is partially delegated to primary care.  It remains a joint responsibility between the nominated GP and the hospital clinician to ensure ongoing safe usage of the medicine.  Shared care protocols and proformas were developed to assist in this process.

Whilst a GP is able to prescribe any medicine listed in the BNF it would not be advisable to prescribe medicines outside of the guidelines provided by the Doncaster Medicines Management team.