What should a GP do if a patient unilaterally discontinues the prescription of a specialist?
The patient has been diagnosed with a condition by a specialist, unknown to the GP. The specialist prescribes a medication. A month later the patient visits his GP, but three days prior to his appointment he discontinues the medication prescribed by the specialist.
What should the GP do:
He should advise the patient to resume the medication.
He should advise the patient not to resume the medication until the GP has seen the report from the specialist.
He should not advise anything until seeing the specialist's report.
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If the patient quit without sophisticated reason, a GP usually would advise the patient to resume the medication. They would also, of course, review the specialist's report when available.
Sophisticated reasons include:
quitting due to side effects.
quitting due to intake provides difficulty (fear of injections, fear of pills etc.).
other medical conditions the specialist wasn‘t aware of.
new medication prescribed from another therapist
and many more.
In such cases, the GP would do whatever is appropriate, but these edge cases are very much reliant on every single case, and as such unfitting for the Q&A format of SE.
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