Motion: 'categorical diagnostic data are the backbone of good prescribing practice'

For...

You need to establish rapport before you can talk about the substance use and its treatment. If there is no rapport then there is no point to any kind of intervention; service users will not take in anything that is said to them, they will probably dislike their practitioner, and are likely to drop out.

Against...

Establishing rapport is important and needs to be part of dealing with the problem the service user wants help with. It is no good wasting time just trying to strike up some rapport. Service users want to know that they are going to get the help they need and that their practitioner has that as their focus.

For... The most useful single piece of information about anybody with any health problem is to know what is wrong with them. Not only does this determine the therapy that is needed, the likely outcome, and the therapy setting, but also provides an essential national statistic. Against... Everybody is different and it is damaging to try and place people in a box which then means that they get a therapy they did not want and is not appropriate. Collecting data to feed into agency or national statistics is not in service users’ best interests and gives a false impression of a scientific approach. Medications are licensed for use to treat specified disorders or conditions. Prescribers should have specialist training before they think of deviating from the given indications of a medication. The World Health Organisation maintains the ICD as a reference guide to every disease and disorder recognised by health care professionals. It is a useful guide for prescribers. The ICD is a handy reference describing the nature of addiction and related harms. The descriptions of disorders, such as addiction problems and mental health problems, are useful pegs around which practitioners can build a full picture of a person’s substance use. So, a familiarity with ICD is useful beyond the needs of prescribers. The WHO states the prime purpose of the ICD is to create systematic recording, analysis, interpretation and comparison of health care data collected in different countries or regions and at different times. It is compiled by consensus of an international panel and is now in its 11th revision. The UK government uses ICD-11 for health care statistics. Browse the addictions section of the ICD-11 website… World Health Organisation International Classification of Diseases and Disorders ICD-11 Decide which side of the debate you support and then Make Your Own Case