Medical Observer observes.

Workforce Crisis hits home for Rudd.
Desi Corbett

KEVIN Rudd is feeling the sharp end of the GP workforce crisis with his own electorate in Queensland calling on him to relax rules governing the placement of overseas doctors.

Locals have warned the situation in the Prime Minister’s inner Brisbane electorate of Griffith will reach “flash-point” this month when the fifth practice in a two-kilometre radius closes and the Logan Road General Practice loses a doctor, leaving up to 8000 patients without a GP.

Griffith is one of many inner metropolitan areas facing GP shortages, but practices in these areas are unable to employ international medical graduates (IMGs) because federal laws only allow them to work in designated Districts of Workforce Shortage.

Inner metropolitan areas are not eligible for District of Workforce Shortage status.

Dr Janet Clarkson, principal of the Logan Road practice, said three GPs from Canada, New Zealand and China were willing to work but she was unable to take them on.

Patients and GPs in the area called on the government to lift the ban on IMGs working in inner-metro areas with a known medical workforce shortage.

Dr Clarkson, 60, threw down the gauntlet for the government to tell her patients where to go for treatment if she retired.

AMA Queensland president Dr Ross Cartmill said the situation showed the workforce shortage was not only affecting rural areas.

Mr Rudd’s office did not respond to MO’s requests for comment in time for deadline.