Madam, - Dr Muiris Houston writes that "the very structure of your local family practice is about to be challenged" ( The Irish Times, July 7th).
While it is certainly true that many women GPs have chosen not to work full-time, it does not automatically follow that part-time GPs cannot be fully involved in all aspects of practice. There are many part-time women GPs who are managing partners, trainers or researchers - and, indeed, involved in the new primary care teams (at which many of our full-time colleagues baulk).
The distinguishing feature of many of these GPs is that they are in partnership with other women. Some of their practices are in the most deprived parts of the inner city and suburbs of Dublin, providing comprehensive care to very vulnerable people.
Women GPs who work as part-time assistants often find themselves doing so because of the all-or-nothing choice offered by our male colleagues, who believe that if you cannot be full-time in practice then it is not possible to be a partner.
Strangely, this view does not apply to our eminent academic GPs, who are in part-time clinical practice to facilitate their research.
In countries such as Sweden there are very high retention rates of women in family practice because of the flexible attitude to this issue. It may surprise your readers to learn, for example, that paid maternity leave is the exception rather than the rule for women GPs in Ireland.
General practice in this country works well. There is high patient satisfaction, easy access, equity and continuity of care. This is undoubtedly due to the hard work of our older colleagues, who sacrificed their time and their families' time to patient care for so long. Perhaps it is easier now to predict the demise of general practice than to consider that perhaps they too could have done things differently.
Women GPs will cope with the challenges ahead, starting with the attitudes of our male colleagues. - Yours, etc,
Dr EDEL McGINNITY,
Dublin 15.