Maura O'Meara: GP for Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr is kep busy caring for a population of 500
I work between Inis Oírr and Inis Meáin. It's mostly an elderly population here, with about 200 people living on Inis Meáin and 300 on Inis Oírr. When I came here first, I thought, with a population of only 500, it would be really easy, but actually it is very busy.
Over the summer we experience a huge flux with about 400 or 500 tourists coming to the islands every day. Then we have the Irish students on both islands (up to 300 teenagers learning Irish) as well as the national school teachers improving their Irish. During the summer I see a lot of heavy trauma - broken bones and head injuries. On the islands people do things they normally wouldn't do and they end up slipping off hills and falling off bikes.
The people here are very good and in the winter I rarely get called out at night unless it's important. In the summer it's a real movable feast and anything goes. I get called out a lot in the evening. People tend to panic when they are on an island. Last weekend I got a call from a person with a headache wondering if there was any paracetamol available on the island.
I start my day at 9 a.m. On Mondays and Fridays I get the Aer Arann flight out to Inis Meáin, which takes about three or four minutes. The public health nurse, Fionnula Lynch Faherty, meets me, and we discuss how our patients are doing. I rent an office in the local co-op and from there I dispense medicines because there is no pharmacy on the island. From 11 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. I do house calls.
There are a lot of housebound patients on the islands and usually I would do five or six calls a day. From 2 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. I hold a clinic.
Then it's back home to Inis Oírr, where I might do a couple more house calls. I usually finish up at around 6 p.m. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I work on Inis Oírr. Rita Flaherty is the public health nurse here.
I am also on call 24-7 and I find it hellishly difficult to get a locum to take some time off. People are reluctant to come out here for locum work because they feel they might get marooned.
During the day, when there is an emergency and if the patient is relatively stable, I will send them to the mainland in the plane and have an ambulance waiting for them on the airstrip. It can be quite quick this way. At night, if they are stable, I will call the lifeboat, but if it is really serious, I will call the helicopter in. This doesn't happen too frequently.
Being a GP here on the islands is very different to my other medical experiences. I was an anaesthetist and a GP in Waterford and Celbridge before I moved out here in 2001. I love working here. It is a beautiful place to live with really amazing scenery. I have two sons and I think it is a really wonderful place for them to grow up. I think I would be severely stressed if I were working as a GP on the mainland.
Most of the time I'm pretty content and I am able to separate home time from work time. But still I get people coming up to me in the pub with their medical problems. People will even come up to my husband and say, "the brother's not feeling too good, you might send the wife up to him".
(In interview with Fiona Tyrrell)