Opinion
‘I love my job, but it’s time to go’
Professor Louise Stone is calling on GPs to share their stories as part of an investigation into why female GPs leave clinical general practice.
Three in 10 GPs say they are intending to retire within five years.
Australia is facing a critical shortage of GPs, with three in 10 GPs intending to retire within five years.
Many GPs report declining job satisfaction, unsustainable workloads and increasing financial stress, with complex regulatory changes and increasing administrative requirements particularly damaging.
GPs also describe increasing moral distress as they feel unable to protect patients from harm in a healthcare system under pressure.
Female GPs do longer consultations with a greater focus on mental health and chronic disease. This causes high rates of burnout and financial stress and contributes to one of the highest gender pay gaps in healthcare.
This is why I am leading a project to better understand why female GPs are leaving.
Funded by an RACGP Wellbeing Grant, I am working alongside former RACGP President Dr Karen Price, Associate Professor Megan Cahill, Associate Professor Michelle Barrett, and Dr Erin Walsh.
Together, we are conducting an online survey and a series of interviews with GPs who have retired or are intending to retire within five years. We are also interviewing GPs who have reduced their GP clinical hours by at least 50% or are intending to do so.
It is critical that we understand how female GPs have been nudged out of the workforce.
There is a saying that you can’t recruit your way out of a retention crisis, and we are facing an unprecedented loss of expert female GPs to the healthcare workforce.
I want to know what drives them out of practice, and, if anything, what might bring them back.
GPs invest considerable personal resources into their careers.
Being a GP is a large part of their identity. Workload reduction and/or retirement is not an easy decision.
By analysing key turning points in the narratives of women GPs we can identify wellbeing threats to this group and begin to craft interventions to retain this critical workforce
GPs interested in participating in this project can read more about it and complete the survey online, or ask any questions about the project via louise.stone@adelaide.edu.au.
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