Family doctors demand protection

FAMILY doctors have been fire-bombed, subjected to armed robberies and serious physical assaults over the last 18 months and are demanding action from the Department of Health.

Dublin GP Dr Raymond Walley is calling on the Department of Health to help GPs combat the attacks before a doctor is killed.

He believes all attacks on doctors should be recorded in a central database to assess whether attacks are becoming more frequent and more violent. "Unless we know the extent of the problem, it is difficult to plan a response to it."

Dr Walley, who is also a member of the Irish Medical Organisation's GP committee, is also seeking:

A tracking system for violent patients.

Funding to train GPs and staff on how to handle violent incidents and situations

Money to provide protective measures such as CCTV and security personnel at vulnerable surgeries.

"If we do not become pro-active and respond when GPs are being fire-bombed and physically abused, I am not sure what are we waiting for. Ireland seems to have a history of only dealing with these things in crisis. Are we waiting for the death of a GP?" Dr Walley asked in an interview with the Irish Medical Times.

According to Dr Walley, a study carried out by Dr Philip O'Connell from the Eastern Health Board's GP Unit in 1995 said family doctors needed to have a system of recording attacks. Dr Walley said this system still does not exist nine years later, but anecdotal evidence showed the number of assaults was increasing.

While Dr Walley said verbal and physical attacks were more likely to occur in deprived urban areas and in surgeries with a large number of medical card patients (GMS patients), such incidents are not confined to these regions or to Dublin.

"It tends to happen in deprived areas, in GMS lists. It does not tend to happen in private patient populations," he said. It also appears most offenders tend to be males under the age of 30, but there have been instances of women and even people in their 70s becoming abusive.

Giving examples of some of the incidents over the last 18 months, Dr Walley said a male patient refused to leave a consultation with a female GP and had to be removed by gardaí. In another, a GP retired because of two assaults, the second of which fractured his pelvis.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said that in situations where GPs find themselves or their staff under attack from members of the public they should report the matter to the gardaí and have the matter investigated, and, where necessary, pursued through normal civil procedures.

"Decisions on the appropriate security arrangements for GPs, operating from private practice premises, are for individual GPs to make. There is provision for GPs to use some of their accumulated savings from rational drug prescribing schemes for enhancement of their practices, including security arrangements," the spokesperson added.