Shortage of GPs leads to recruitment drive in Britain

A CAMPAIGN to recruit British-based GPs to work in Ireland will be launched next month.

Facing a growing demographic problem due to the number of GPs reaching retirement age in the coming years, the Health Service Executive has been forced to look abroad.

Recently appointed HSE GP advisor Dr Joe Clarke told the Oireachtas heath committee yesterday that a recruitment campaign in the British media will begin within the “next three or four weeks”.

He added the HSE was examining ways in which general practice could be more “family friendly” in order to attract doctors and maintain them in it.

A HSE spokeswoman said: “The campaign is aimed at getting more GPs into this country. Similar recruitment of nurses from abroad has occurred perviously.”

The lack of GPs has reached a critical point in some rural and disadvantaged areas. In parts of north inner-city Dublin, there is only one GP for every 2,500 people compared to the national average of one per 1,600 people, and the British ratio of one GP per 1,200 citizens.

Another problem relates to what some doctors refer to as the “feminisation” of general practice. More than 60% of GP training places are now taken by female doctors, who may at some point in their careers want to take time out to start a family or who may prefer to work part-time.

Meanwhile, the Health Committee was told that 59% of last year’s physiotherapy graduates are unemployed, working outside of physiotherapy, or have emigrated. The position is little better for 2007 graduates, with 58% employed as physiotherapists but only 16% on a permanent basis.

Irish Society of Charted Physiotherapists president, Annette Shanahan, told the committee many qualified physiotherapists were working as “everything from care assistants to Burger King staff.”

She added that a survey this month found that waiting times for medical card patients to see a physiotherapist ranged from six weeks to one year, with the average waiting time for hospital outpatient treatment currently at 16 weeks.

This time lapse was damaging patients chances of making a full recovery.

Ms Shanahan said the chances of a full recovery declined sharply if a patient did not attend a physiotherapist within three months of their injury.

Physiotherapists are calling on the Government to introduce legal definitions to the titles physiotherapist, a job which requires several years of training, and the much looser term “physical therapist.”

Fine Gael said that problems with physiotherapy provision were largely to do with “bad governance” in the health service.