More GPs for regional areas

Transcript: AMA Queensland Committee of General Practice Chair, Dr Maria Boulton, ABC Sunshine Coast, Breakfast with Sarah Howells, Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Subjects: Regional GP workforce shortages, telehealth, NQ pharmacy trial

SARAH HOWELLS:    Are you finding it hard to get an appointment with a GP? The shortage of GPs around Cooroy and the Noosa Hinterland has been so bad that the Federal Government has reclassified the area so local clinics can now recruit doctors who are trained overseas. Dr Maria Boulton is a GP and the Chair of the AMA Queensland Committee of General Practice. Good morning.

MARIA BOULTON:    Good morning Sarah.

SARAH HOWELLS:    So how bad things have things got?

MARIA BOULTON:   It's always been a little bit of a challenge, recruiting GPs to some areas. And what we're seeing lately in general practice is that there's been an increase in patients presenting with medical issues. So even in the city, we have a GP who's had a practice for about 30 years and he says that he's never been as busy as he is now.

SARAH HOWELLS:    Wow, okay, so it's not so much a shortage of doctors as an increase in demand and therefore needing more people to look after them?

MARIA BOULTON:     Yeah, it's a little bit of both and it's always been a challenge. We need to look at solutions to attract doctors to those areas where there's a longer wait than others. And this is where the GP peak bodies like AMA Queensland and the College of GPs are really great because they're happy to work with local communities and with the government to find local solutions to attract workforce to those areas.

SARAH HOWELLS:    I mean, this is what we've heard as well from Wide Bay MP Llew O'Brien, who said that several clinics in the area were hit with those unexpected changes during the pandemic and therefore found it hard to recruit enough staff to meet demand. How common is that story? How widespread is the GP shortage at the moment?

MARIA BOULTON:     It depends, and it varies between area to area. It’s a shortage of all - especially if we're talking rural and remote - it's a shortage of all allied health professionals and attracting all sorts of workers to those areas. The mining industry is very good at attracting workers. I guess we could be looking at what techniques they are using to getting workers out to the mining regions and learn from those.

SARAH HOWELLS:    Do you have any ideas of what those sorts of things could be?

MARIA BOULTON:     This DPA change, it's called a distribution priority area, so areas that are in need get classified as a DPA area, which means that you can hire GPs that are from a different pool. So they could be international medical graduates, or they could be GPs who are bonded to a scholarship where they have to go to the DPA areas to be able to access Medicare fees and this is a really, really good start.

But we also need to support their families. You know, you don't just get a GP. You get a GP who might have a partner or have children, and we need to ensure that those workers are supported. And it's not just GPs, it's nurses, pharmacy, physios, all those people that we need to come to these areas, we need to ensure that all these families are also supported.

SARAH HOWELLS:    So in the current situation, where does it leave patients if you can't get an appointment to see a GP and you're not so sick that you need to be in hospital? What do you do? What's happening to these people?

MARIA BOULTON:     Yeah, so there's a few different things that you can do. The only good thing that came out of this pandemic is telehealth. There's a lot of GPs that now do telehealth. There's a lot of psychiatrists that now do telehealth. Perhaps try to get a telehealth appointment with a GP in a different clinic, also have some flexibility around who you see. So if your GP’s booked, for example, is there another GP in the clinic that can see you? And for those clinics to be supported to be able to source that workforce to be able to help patients. We don't want patients to wait. We want patients to be seen as soon as possible and we do everything possible to make that happen.

SARAH HOWELLS:    And if people aren't able to get those appointments and then just end up, ‘look, I’ll just do it later’, they put it off - how bad can that be for a person's long-term health?

MARIA BOULTON:     Yeah, and that's something that's happened through the pandemic. We've seen a lot of people put off some of their screenings. So patients who didn't attend their breast screening, for example, or didn't attend their skin checks, who are now presenting for those because they’re more confident going into the community. And we don't recommend that people do that because, say for example, if you have a melanoma, your outcome is much better if you pick it up earlier than later.

SARAH HOWELLS:    So will being able to recruit doctors who've trained overseas be an easy fix? They're not necessarily arriving directly from overseas though, are they? Some doctors already in Australia have restrictions on where they can work, is that right?

MARIA BOULTON:     Yeah, that's right. And doctors arriving from overseas have to go through a lot of testing and training. And the way that Medicare works, they can only work in areas that are classified as DPA. So it does help. It also helps to access those doctors who are on funded scholarships as well. Every little bit helps.

The main thing is recognising that those communities do deserve GPs. There are allied health providers that want to be able to work as a GP, but general practice is really difficult. Decades ago, it was recognised that you couldn't just go straight from hospital training and do great work as a GP. You had to go through years of training and examinations because it's not an easy thing to be able to do, to be able to provide all the services that we provide. And people in those areas do deserve GPs. If you have a car accident and you need a chest drain, you need someone who's trained to do those things. You can't just have someone who hasn't had adequate training looking after you.

SARAH HOWELLS:    Do you think we need to be bringing in more doctors from overseas to meet the demand now that our borders have reopened? Would that make recruiting more international doctors easier?

MARIA BOULTON:     I think the recruitment of international doctors always happens. It was hampered by the borders being closed. But we need longer term solutions as well. We need to look at where our Australian-trained doctors go, for example. There's a new course that has been set up in Central Queensland to try and recruit doctors that actually live in those areas and hopefully will stay in those areas. I did a scholarship when I was in medical school and I used to go to Proserpine once a year and I actually ended up working in Central Queensland for nine years. So looking at initiatives like those that work and supporting those initiatives.

SARAH HOWELLS:    Well, it's great that there are some upcoming solutions and that it's being looked at as well. Very important. Dr Maria Boulton, thank you for the chat this morning.

22 February 2022

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