Irish GPs struggle to take on new patients due to practitioner shortages and expanding workloads, according to the Irish College of General Practitioners.
A nationwide survey conducted by The Irish Independent found that 61% of Irish GPs are currently unable to take on new patients.
Spokesperson for the Irish College of General Practitioners Dr Diarmuid Quinlan told The Anton Savage Show that population growth is one of the main factors at play.
“The GP workforce shortage has multiple factors to it – first and foremost is population growth,” he said.
“Ireland now has over 5.1 million people, which is our largest population since the famine.
“We also have an ageing population - the number of older people over 65 has gone up from over 700,000 to over 800,000 in the last four years, and is expected to touch a million people by 2030.”
Dr Quinlan said GP workloads have 'rapidly expanded' due to the aftermath of COVID-19 and the expansion of the medical card scheme, which can make it difficult to free up time for new patients.
The waiting room for the Pfizer vaccine against COVID19 at the vaccination center, at the hospital group of Melun. Melun, France, February 8th, 2021. Photo by Daniel Derajinski/ABACAPRESS.COMAccording to Dr Quinlan, more support is needed to allow GPs to open practices in rural areas that are suffering the most from shortages.
“The Midlands is a particular area where there’s a big deficit, down the Western seaboard and the Iveragh Peninsula in Kerry... is a particular point,” he said.
“Eight thousand people [are] living on this quite isolated peninsula, and the number of GPs on the Iveragh Peninsula is falling.”
Plans to increase numbers
However, Dr Quinlan said plans to increase GP numbers are well underway.
“We had planned to increase the number of GP trainees to 350 by 2026 – we're two years ahead of that,” he said.
“We are very substantially expanding the GP workforce, and that really speaks to the close collaboration between the Irish College of GPs and the HSE.
“We’ve also got a rural GP program for international medical graduates, which has placed well in excess of 100 overseas, highly experienced GPs into rural practices right across Ireland.”
Dr Quinlan recommended that patients without a GP who are ‘acutely unwell’ seek treatment through out of hours services.
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Featured image: A GP consults a patient, 17-2-24. Image: Aaron Amat / Alamy
