Drug services in rural areas

The key to effective rural drug services is partnership involving true multi-agency, cross-sectoral working, good liaison practices, and a blurring of the distinction between generic and specialist services. The key is the high level of continuing cooperation and communication between the various parts of the drug services network. The rest needs to be directed towards ensuring ready and reasonable access to drug services designed specifically for the area concerned, rather than being an ineffectual mirror of urban services. Rural areas have been prone to a form of archaism in which the countryside is perceived as a peaceful and solid combination of utility and beauty. It has been seen as a uniform place where the travails and stresses of urban life do not intrude, and where tranquillity and the inexorable yet benign cycles of nature are the dominant forces.