Madam, - I read with interest the interview with Prof Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the HSE (The Irish Times, December 15th). He confidently predicts the creation of 100 "primary care teams" over the next few years.
This would be a most welcome development for thousands of Irish patients. However, as always when dealing with the HSE, it would appear that aspiration and reality have little in common.
On November 24th, 2005 The Irish Times published a report from the FÁS Market Research Unit indicating that would be a shortage of 1,000 general practitioners by 2015. This projection allowed for all proposed increases in the number of doctors in GP training. The report also assumed that all GP trainees would be working full-time for their entire careers. Given that approximately 80 per cent of Irish GP trainees are women, it can be assumed that the figure of 1,000 is most likely an under-estimate.
Over the past two years neither the HSE nor the Irish College of General Practitioners appears to have made any serious effort to address this issue. There is no shortage of Irish doctors wishing to become general practitioners. They are prevented from doing so by artificial restrictions on training imposed by the Irish College of General Practitioners. Many hundreds of colleagues have emigrated to the UK as a result.
In December 2005 I wrote to The Irish Times to highlight this issue. Neither the ICGP nor the HSE felt it necessary to respond. As always, it would appear that the HSE would prefer to wait for a crisis rather than act to prevent it.
Irish general practice stands on the brink of collapse due to an entirely preventable manpower shortage. Isolated rural areas are likely to be the first affected as their local GP retires to be replaced by no one. Instead of dealing with this issue the HSE would prefer to talk about mythical "primary care teams" that will simply never exist without the necessary doctors to lead them.
I suspect I will writing to you again on this subject in another two years, by which time I expect nothing will have been done. - Yours, etc,
Dr RUAIRI HANLEY, Francis Street, Drogheda, Co Louth.