Doctors 'at breaking point' due to chronic inability to attract new applicants, IMO says
Dr Denis McCauley, Chair of the GP Committee of the IMO, said that doctors currently working in the system were at breaking point.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said doctors currently working in the system are at "breaking" point, not least due to a chronic inability to attract applicants to vacant posts.
“After two years of being on the frontline of the Covid-19 battle, doctors are exhausted yet are unable to get a break due to our inability to recruit staff to the system," said Dr Denis McCauley, Chair of the IMO's GP committee.
“GPs around the country have been unable to secure locums to allow them to take annual leave, there are no supports to encourage younger GPs to establish in practice and the additional out-of-hours burden on individual GPs is taking its toll.
"The current contract does not reflect modern General Practice and we must urgently address the systemic issues that are making the specialty unattractive to our new graduates particularly in areas of a service resourcing sustainable workload, work-life balance, and family-friendly arrangements.”
The IMO said the manpower crisis will only add to the "already dangerous waiting lists and access to services".
Dr Clive Kilgallen, Chair of the IMO Consultants’ Committee said the scale and scope of the problem cannot be overstated with over 900,000 people on some form of waiting list for treatment, and over 290,000 of those have been there for more than a year.
“Within the system consultants are not supported with the resources to deliver care – we have too few beds, too few health professionals and an ever-increasing demand."
Currently, Ireland is “significantly” below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average on the number of consultants and GPs required per head of population.
According to the IMO, the HSE has failed to attract a single candidate to some advertised posts while more than 1 in 5 consultant posts remain vacant.
Non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) are emigrating at high levels with the Medical Council register indicating 3,000 doctors will have left over the past five years to take up positions abroad.
The IMO says NCHDs are regularly forced to work in excess of legal limits to fill the gaps and the levels of burnout and stress among medical professionals is “unsustainably high.”
Dr Kilgallen says Ireland must value Irish medical professionals and give them better working conditions to stay working here.
"We need to listen to doctors, to consultants and our trainees, and see what will make them stay in Ireland and work within our public system.
"We all want what is best for the patient, but current policies are not delivering on this core value.”
Over the next five years, almost 30% of consultants and 30% of GPs are due to retire, with continued unavailability of locum cover leading to GPs being unable to take leave, increasing the number that retire early and decreasing the attractiveness of General Practice as a choice for younger doctors.
Just under 30% of all general medical services (GMS) GPs are aged 60 or over. The IMO says it is likely that the problem will only increase over the coming years.
This in turn is affecting GMS list applications with very few or no candidates for singlehanded GMS lists in both rural and urban areas.
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