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Prince Charles expressed his delight at the news a GP practice in Cornwall has been using “social prescribing” instead of conventional medicines to help some of their patients. The Prince of Wales visited yesterday St Austell Healthcare. 

Meeting some 30 members of the staff at the practice, Prince Charles hailed those “pioneering” the movement to offer some patients non-medical interventions including art classes and trips to allotments.

Their choice, he said, was giving him hope for the future.

Speaking outside the practice, Prince Charles told the socially-distancing staff it was “most heartening” to meet medical expert prescribing non-medical treatments to right lifestyle ailments. 

He continued: “They are living proof, if it was ever needed, that beyond our conventional medicines and procedures there are so many other interventions that can contribute to our health and healing.

“The work that you are doing here with an emphasis on the psychosocial as well as the biomedical, mobilising the whole community and exploring the limits of how we can help each other, is surely a lesson to us all.

“I can only say that what I have seen and heard today gives me enormous hope for the future.”   

Prince Charles, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in late March, also praised the “heroic work” NHS staff and carers continue to do as coronavirus keeps on threatening the country.

He said: “We have heard much recently about the heroic work being done in hospitals during this pandemic, but I believe it is now also time to thank those of you in General Practice and Primary Care for the heroic work that you have been performing within your communities.

“I have nothing but praise for doctors and nurses, but what strikes me most is how this vital work is part of a vast team effort and I am so grateful for this opportunity to meet with those other members of the team.” 

Prince Charles has been a vocal supporter of complementary therapies over the past decades.

Last year he came under fire for becoming the patron of a homoeopathy group – the Faculty of Homeopathy.

Homoeopathy is banned by the NHS and has been branded by Dame Sally Davies during a parliamentary committee “rubbish”. 

St Austell is a test site for the Institute for Social Prescribing hosted by the South West Academic Health Science Network and was one of the several stops made by Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during their annual three-day tour to the Duchy of Cornwall.

On Monday, Prince Charles and the Duchess visited together the mythical Tintagel Castle.

After having crossed the new Tintagel bridge, set over a 190ft gorge, Prince Charles and Camilla wrote their name on slates later incorporated into the bridge. 

Later that day, Camilla visited alone an air ambulance trust to carry out the naming ceremony of a £7.5m chopper.

But the visit was interrupted by an emergency call, which saw two of the paramedics in attendance run off to attend a person who had suffered from a head injury and a seizure.   

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