GPs have identified a lack of interpreters in the health system as the single biggest barrier to offering quality medical care to asylum-seekers and ethnic minority patients, writes Dr Muiris Houston, Medical Correspondent.
A survey of more than 1,000 GPs, the results of which will be presented today at the annual general meeting of the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP), shows that three-quarters of family doctors in the State have asylum-seekers as patients.
It found that 57 per cent of doctors had between 20 and 200 people of an ethnic minority on their patient lists.
GPs said that they would welcome further training on how different cultures influence health. They indicated that they would also like more information on infectious diseases specific to asylum-seekers.
The study, carried out by Dr Philip Crowley and Ms Pauline Tierney of the ICGP, also highlighted the manpower difficulties currently facing general practice.
Asylum-seekers often require double the usual appointment times, which was indirectly exacerbating an existing problem in recruiting and retaining family doctors in the Republic.
Dr Philip Crowley, ICGP project director for general practice in a multicultural society, told The Irish Times that "in order to care for asylum-seekers properly, we must have a proper face- to-face interpreting service, at least in the main population centres".
He was concerned that the failure to provide such a facility for ethnic minority patients could amount to institutional discrimination by the health service.
Meanwhile, the representative body for general practitioners last night set out its development priorities for the next five years.
The ICGP chief executive, Mr Fionán Ó Cuinneagáin, said that family doctors carried out 16 million consultations per annum, representing a significant increase in workload over recent years.
He criticised the Government's failure to deal with the manpower problem since it had been placed on the agenda five years ago.
"We see a need for 150 replacement GPs to be trained every year compared with a current output of 88. With the shift in gender balance - more than 70 per cent of qualified GPs are now female - and a change in lifestyle/work balance, it is clear that we need to reconfigure general practice structures," he said.
Dr Frank Hill, a GP in Milltown, Co Kerry, told the meeting of the inordinate amount of time family doctors spent on administrative issues, which was taking them away from patient care.
Dr Niall Ó Cléirigh, a GP from Dublin's north inner city, spoke about the difficulty he had in getting locum cover and in recruiting another doctor to join him in practice. "There has been an explosion in practice management and administrative work which inhibits my ability to see patients face to face", he added.
Dr Derbhile Donnelly, a Limerick city GP, told the meeting of her concerns about competence assurance, the process run by the Medical Council by which doctors maintain professional standards. "We need a competence assurance system that is just, flexible and encouraging - one that reflects the unique variety in general practice," she said.