Sir, - The Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, during The Doolin Lecture, made a number of comments in relation to members of the medical profession which many of us in The Kildare Faculty of The Irish College of General Practitioners felt to be ill informed and disparaging. In particular, he expressed an opinion that it was regrettable that doctors demonstrated a marked tendency to stop learning shortly after their graduation, and were somewhat deficient in the commitment to maintaining and developing their skills and knowledge base.
Following an audit of continuing medical education activities organised through the Kildare Faculty of The Irish College of General Practitioners, it is evident that family doctors in Kildare are clearly committed to the concept of maintaining, upgrading and developing their skills and knowledge.
This audit shows that 47 GPs within the faculty completed a total of 1,851 hours of tutorials and lectures organised as part of The Faculty Continuing Medical Education (CME) Programme, from September 1992 to April 1996. This is a high quality, audited, supervised programme run by the Irish College of General Practitioners, which has been the subject of considerable interest from other international bodies as a successful and innovative programme which has a marked positive impact on patient care.
Specific areas which were covered by the faculty CME programme included the menopause care of the dying, family planning, crisis pregnancy counselling, breast disease, practice organisation, substance abuse epilepsy. hypertension, asthma consultation skills, and minor surgical procedures to name but a small number of the tutorials in the CME programme over the last 40 months.
This does not include attendance at additional lectures organised by the Kildare Clinical Society. or other educational institutions or seminars organised by The Eastern Health Board or The Department of Health. Nor does it take into account time spent by individual GPs in reading medical journals or otherwise conducting their own private study activities. If all of these additional activities were taken into account, the total commitment in terms of hours spent would be considerably higher. No account is taken either of many members of the faculty who would have taken complete courses in subjects related to general practice (family planning, occupational medicine, care of the dying, etc).
In addition to these learning activities, members of the Kildare Faculty participated in the ICGPs National Care of the Elderly Research Project in 1993-94, which was a nationwide study undertaken with the object of assessing the health care needs of the older members of our community. The faculty is currently undertaking research into male violence.
Extreme pressure of work, in terms of increasing workload, patient demand, and under resourcing of general practice by the Department of Health have led to a situation which has the average GP working in excess of 74 hours per week. Despite this obvious overload, members of the Kildare faculty have still managed to make a serious additional time commitment to the area of continuing medical education, as indicated by the figures above. This commitment is in keeping with the central philosophy of the ICGP, which places quality of patient care as the core value of the college.
Should the Minister wish to attend our faculty for dinner, he would be most welcome to enjoy our hospitality, and perhaps make himself better acquainted with certain aspects of general practice which he seems rather ignorant of. We promise not to ask him for £100.00 for the pleasure of his company, and if he is short of some headed notepaper. he can always borrow some of ours, free, gratis and for nothing! - Yours. etc..
Kildare Faculty ICGP,
Newbridge. Co Kildare.