Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President, Sydney

PHELPS: I think there are two alarming features. The first one is that the GP workforce is ageing, that 10% of GPs are aged over 65 and there don't seem to be the young doctors coming through to be able to replace those numbers so we're going to see an acute worsening of the GP shortage over the coming years.

The AMA has been working with the Department of Health on a workforce liaison group so that we can make an evidence-based approach to the GP workforce shortage so that we can solve this problem for the Australian community.

The second concern is the length of hours that GPs are working. Now this is worse in the rural and remote areas where there are fewer doctors who are having to do more of the work to keep up with the workload and the demand from patients who need to have a doctor and need to have medical care.

And so the two major issues are not enough doctors, the doctors we have are getting older and we haven't got the young doctors coming through to replace them.

QUESTION: This working party that you've set up, what do you hope that they might recommend to alleviate those problems?

PHELPS: I think we have to avoid a kneejerk reaction and it takes 10 to 12 years to train a general practitioner or another specialist and I think we need to take an evidence-based approach where we look at how many doctors we have now, what the capacity of the medical colleges and the medical students - we have to look at how many doctors we have now, we have to look at the capacity of the universities and the medical colleges to train doctors coming through the system because you can't train unlimited numbers of doctors.

It takes resources, it takes volunteers to teach the doctors and also doctors need to be able to have patients to, if you like, train with and obviously you don't want to inundate patients with medical students and registrars.

So we have a situation where we need to be careful about planning of the medical workforce, we need to take a careful approach to it and the AMA is working with the Department of Health to ensure that it's done in a careful and not in a kneejerk manner.

QUESTION: How can you attract more doctors to the bush?

PHELPS: It's a very difficult question, about attracting more doctors to the bush. We have an overall undersupply of general practitioners and that's one of the areas where we need to focus on making sure that we carefully plan the workforce into the future.

In terms of keeping the doctors there who are in the bush and also training young doctors who would be happy to go in work in remote areas, I think that the rural clinical schools are a good idea, so that young doctors and medical students get an opportunity to see the value of working in rural areas. Because it's a different style of medical practice and also to make life as easy as possible for the doctors who work there.

Now, that might mean looking a little laterally in terms of assisting with the set-up of their practices, assisting with allied health services like practice nurses and making sure that the allied health services in the community, such as community nurses, physiotherapists, audiologists and so forth, are actually there in the community supporting the work of GPs and that we keep the country hospitals open and working so that the doctors can do the work they went to the country to do.

QUESTION: Could I also ask you, with metropolitan doctors as well, is it also a fact that it's not just seeing patients face-to-face now, but they also have after-hours email consultations and phone consultations? How much does that add to the doctor's workload?

PHELPS: The non-face-to-face work adds a great deal to a doctor's workload. For example, once you've finished consulting you have to return patients' calls, you might have to talk to the pharmacist, you might have to speak to the community nurse, to the specialist that's working with a patient. You might have to return patients' consultations - you might have to return patients' telephone calls. There's an enormous amount of non-face-to-face work which is not remunerated for GPs which adds to their workload without necessarily adding to their work satisfaction.

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