Government urged to tackle rising shortage of family GPs

DOCTORS’ representatives will tomorrow ask the Department of Health to tackle the growing shortage of family doctors.

With an increasing number of medical students opting out of a career in general practice, the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) will urge the Department to make GP working conditions more attractive and to invest more resources in their training.

“The existing programme will cater for the training of about 85 students this year,” ICGP chairman Dr Richard Brennan said. “We need almost double that number to maintain existing service levels. What we need is investment to expand the training programme.”.

Dr Brennan said the GP manpower shortage would worsen as older GPs approached retirement and an influx of asylum seekers, as well as an aging population, put more pressure on services.

He said the job description of a GP needed to change to attract new recruits, including the introduction of part-time work and more flexible working hours, without excluding doctors from treating medical card holders.

“The existing GMS contract requires the GP to be available 24/7. That is not a family-friendly approach and it does not make general practice an attractive career to train in. If we are to entice students to become GPs, it needs to be reflected in the GMS contract.”

Of the 85 students who train on the GP programme, approximately 20% chose not to become family doctors. Dr Brennan said students’ aspirations had changed and they were no longer willing to work all hours. He said the drain on numbers would also put pressure on the Primary Care Strategy.

“The strategy itself estimated that 400-500 GPs were needed to take on the extra workload. At the moment we are operating a fire-brigade service, treating parents as they present themselves, instead of having time to promote healthcare, which is what the strategy envisages.

“If we don’t implement the Primary Care Strategy, and we can’t without the appropriate number of nurses and doctors, then fewer people will be treated at community level and there will be more and more pressure on hospital beds.”

There are currently 2,500 GPs in Ireland. Dr Brennan said this represented roughly one GP per 2,000 head of population, instead of the more ideal figure of one per 1,200.