DOCTORS NEEDED: Long waits in Douglas to see a GP as numbers decline

GP numbers decline

Dr Aileen Traves, Queensland deputy chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, herself Cairns-based, told Newsport that GP numbers have gone further backwards in the Douglas, Cairns and Tablelands regions in the past few years.

“We’re seeing a negative shift particularly in the more remote and rural communities, continuing to lose doctors.” Dr Traves said.

“That’s for a number of reasons. Partly because of workforce changes as a result of the pandemic, partly because the GP workforce is ageing as well – so there’s a number of GPs who are retiring, they’ve become unwell themselves and have had to leave.

“We’ve got a number of people coming to Cairns seeking GP health care who haven’t been able to get in in their local area in Douglas, so they’re actually driving to Cairns.”

Dr Traves also said there’ve been increasing pressures – mainly financial – on running a practice, resulting in “increasing numbers of practices that have just become unsustainable and not able to continue running, which is a real problem.”

Governments need to support GPs more 

She said typical governments’ responses to the declining numbers of GPs especially in regional and rural areas are not working – is to substitute other services in place of GPs which she said doesn’t work.

“GPs are specially trained to be GPs. That’s why we train to do what we do, that 12 or 13 years, because we know that seeing a GP helps people live healthier lives, reduces pressure on our hospitals, keeps people out of hospital and is actually a cost-effective measure in terms of wholistic care of people, rather than just caring for an individual condition or presentation. 

“The people of the Douglas Shire are right, it has become more difficult to see a GP, and the answer to that is not, oh well we’ll just substitute other services in, it’s well we need to support the GP workforce – find out why that’s happening, and urgently get some boosting in place to actually help support the GP workforce and increase the immediate and long term GP workforce in the area.”

Local training of GPs

One of the keys, Dr Traves said, is local training.

“We’ve got good statistics that show that if you train people locally, then they’re much more likely to stay local, so we know that, we’ve seen that over 20 years now, with our graduates’ programs and training in north Queensland.”

Another major factor towards attracting new doctors to the far north, she believes, is vastly improving their incentives. 

“It’s very obvious when you talk to our student doctors going through, as they’re about to graduate, that they look at the conditions for those employed in hospitals, employee roles as doctors, and they say, ‘why would I want to take the risk of going into GP training?’

“We know GPs and trainees don’t get any paid parental leave, they don’t have paid study leave – major barriers for particularly young women and families.

“There’s not that funding for the work entitlements and incentives to go into general practice, they can stay in a state-based health system.”