Macroom GPs at breaking point
GP services are at a crisis point in Macroom with many patients travelling to Kerry to avail of a doctor.
It emerged yesterday, Wednesday, that some people living in the town are having to travel 60km to see a doctor due to the lack of GPs.
Macroom GP at Sullane Family Practice, Dr John O’Riordan told the Cork Independent: “We’ve been actively trying for the last four or five years to recruit extra GPs, but they really aren’t interested in working somewhere where there’s a significant out of hours commitment, weekend work, and regularly weekday night work. For us, we have weekend commitments that involve 14-hour shifts.”
It comes following Fianna Fáil TD for Cork North West, Aindrias Moynihan, speaking in the Dáil recently about the situation saying that it had reached a “crisis point”.
He said: “GP services are becoming completely oversubscribed with people now having to travel long distances to see a doctor.
“Some are having to go as far afield as Killarney, Mallow and Tralee because there are no available GPs in Macroom.”
Out of hours commitments often mean potential new GPs will opt for positions in the city which offer much less out of hours work and a better work-life balance.
“We can’t cope with the number of people who are requesting a doctor because we have issues with recruiting extra GPs and that comes down to the out of hours commitment in the Macroom area which is much more onerous than elsewhere,” continued Dr O’Riordan.
“Anything could happen to one of our colleagues, sickness or injury, and the situation could go from bad to worse very quickly.”
Recruitment issues have also made it impossible to fill positions left vacant by doctors retiring, or leaving for other reasons.
Speaking about the situation, Dr Ken Harte, who is also based in Macroom, said: “Our calls are approximately three to four times more frequent, and for longer times, than any of the city doctors would be doing. I had a GP who worked with me who left specifically for that reason. She expressed clearly that this was the reason why she left. That was three or four years ago now, I have been unable to attract anyone else to work here.”
Dr Harte believes that the government need to step in and find a way to fix the out-of-hours issue, to make Macroom more attractive to GPs.
“The out of hours commitment needs to be sorted, there’s some chance of attracting more doctors into the area then. I think that’s the most urgent thing that needs to change. The biggest barrier for them is the out of hours. People are having so much trouble accessing a daytime GP that they’re attending the out of hours service for routine problems. Then the out of service becomes too busy, too frequent, too tiring, and too difficult for us to keep that up,” said Dr Harte.
Based in Tralee, GP Dr Bridget O’Brien said: “This morning we had a woman come in who can’t get an appointment with any doctor. Their local GPs cannot physically take more patients. There are issues of that sort beginning to become more frequent and it’s going to lead to a very dysfunctional service.”