Tune in to Health Ed’s live webcast to hear Prof Michael Farrell, Dr Harry Nespolon, Dr Sharron Davis and others debate the evidence, ethics and application of medicinal cannabis
Next Tuesday at 7pm The webcast is free. CLICK HERE to register.
Medicinal cannabis is one of those political and consumer hyped topics which typically can seriously disturb practice productivity as GPs have spend a lot of their time trying to explain the facts, or why they can’t help, to distressed and often misinformed patients.
This is even more the case now that it is approved in Australia for certain indications including treatment of palliative care, epilepsy, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV), multiple sclerosis (MS) and chronic pain.
Recently, a paper published in Lancet Public Health, indicated that in the case of chronic pain, medicinal cannabis probably has no benefits at all. Not evidence based benefits any way. But what about the placebo effect for certain patients?
The confusion and frustration for the GP community goes well beyond explaining evidence.
Getting your patients on the special access scheme to receive the treatment is very bureaucratic and hard. Most GPs simply don’ t have the time to persist.
And then there are the politics. A key emerging belief among many in the medical community is that medicinal cannabis might be a Trojan horse for the major corporations that make the product, to push for wider use, all the way to recreational use.
Next Tuesday, at 7pm, Health Ed is bringing together a panel of six renowned experts in the field to debate and hopefully simplify some of the issues for GPs surrounding the topic.
The panel includes:
Professor Michael Farrell, director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW
Professor Iain McGregor, professor of Psychopharmacology and academic director, Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics
Dr Sharron Davis, GP, and medical cannabis prescriber
Dr Sanjay Nijhawan, medical director, The Clinical Governance and Expansion Strategy, Cannabis Access Clinics
The debate will be moderated by Dr Harry Nespolon, GP and president of the RACGP.
CLICK HERE to register FREE for the webcast
