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‘I’m on my knees’: GP cries out for workforce remedies
As GPs share heartbreaking stories of practice struggles and recruitment impossibilities, one fed-up doctor says action is needed to ‘build the career back up’.
Dr Liz Chappel at her Apple Tree Medical clinic in Cairns.
When Dr Liz Chappel opened her first practice 20 years ago, the medical landscape was a very different place.
At one point, the Cairns GP was running four busy clinics with a total of 16 doctors, but in recent years, those numbers have been dwindling.
Today, she runs two Apple Tree Medical centres, but constant GP vacancies have led to a dramatic cut in their opening hours to just three days a week – and even then, Dr Chappel is still working around the clock.
Her situation is likely familiar to owners right across the country, many of whom are struggling with how to attract more GPs to the regions, and the profession more broadly.
‘We have just been unable to recruit GPs, and I’m trying to cover both practices because we’re short and we can’t find doctors – no one wants to do the job,’ she told newsGP.
‘We had to close one practice down just before COVID-19 in Palm Cove, and then another one … so we’re left with two practices now, and they are privately billing and very busy.
‘It’s never been an easy thing to recruit GPs, but we’ve never had issues [this bad] in the past, so I just work, and work, and work, and I don’t take sick leave – I just can’t.’
Dr Chappel says the situation is ‘dire and unsustainable’, and she is not alone.
An alarming trend across Australia is seeing hundreds of practices being forced to reduce hours or shut up shop completely.
GPs have cited a long list of reasons for the trend, but the inability to recruit doctors coupled with the skyrocketing cost of running a practice are near ever-present factors.
Last year alone, around 200 GP clinics closed across the country, and there are fears that if nothing changes, the healthcare system at large will suffer.
‘How am I feeling? I’m on my knees really,’ Dr Chappel said.
‘Primary care is going to be forced to change, there’s going to be an awful lot more attendances at the hospitals, inappropriate prescribing, and patients being poorly managed.
‘There’s going to be a decline in the health of the population generally in times to come unless things change.’
Dr Chappel says general practice has long been misunderstood, resulting in a lack of meaningful funding, as well as a shift in professional relationships.
‘Until recent times, we had a wonderful collaborative working relationship with the pharmacy teams, but it has now started to become very different,’ she said.
‘I am having numerous reports from patients about pharmacists criticising what we do, and it is so sad as we used to work together really well and now it feels like we are in direct competition with them.’
That changing sentiment comes amid much-criticised pharmacy prescribing pilots rolling out across the country, which have drawn the ire of GPs and led the RACGP to raise ‘significant concerns’.
With a recent analysis predicting a shortfall of 11,392 full-time equivalent GPs by 2032, an influx of new GPs will be desperately needed.
But according to the latest Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand data, general practice was the first preference for only around 10.5% of medical students in 2023, down from 13% the previous year.
‘We just need to get more people wanting to love the job, and it is an amazing job, it is such a privilege, and I feel honoured to be trusted,’ Dr Chappel said.
‘We need to build the career back up, we need more people wanting to do general practice again.
‘We try and encourage the medical students, but they get a lot of encouragement from the hospitals to stay in the hospital system, it’s hard.’
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