Support from the Courier Mail.

Madonna King, the ABC journalist and Courier Mail columnist has given over her Saturday column to our issue today.

Thankyou Madonna, for helping the general public understand the many issues underlying the imminent crisis in general practice.

Madonna's article can be read HERE.

GP workforce problem in all states.

We are in Brisbane, but we know that the GP workforce problem is acute in many urban areas in other states: the Sydney Morning Herald recently highlighted the seriousness of the problem in both Sydney and in Victoria.

If we ask you "Is there a GP workforce shortage in your own area?", how would you respond? Please let us know: email us at brisbanegp@gmail.com with your response.

To: The Divisions.

The following email has been sent to the over fifty urban Divisions of General Practice around the country.

Dear Colleagues,

You may be aware of the national coverage of the GP workforce issue in the Prime Minister’s own electorate of Griffith over the last week. My practice is one of those at the centre of the publicity. In summary, both this and a neighbouring practice are facing closure in the relatively near future due to our inability to find doctors eligible for employment in our inner metropolitan area. I am sixty years of age, with no succession plan for the practice. In the shorter term we will not meet accreditation standards when we are reviewed next March, unless we can find another doctor.

A local campaign was started by a concerned patient several weeks ago and has been received with great enthusiasm by the community. It has received attention from television, radio, local and national newspapers. The first batch of petition signatures has been handed in to Kevin Rudd’s Griffith electorate office; a second batch will follow shortly.

We know that many of you in urban areas in other states are in a similar situation. We believe the problem can be solved, if there is a will to do so. We have some practical ideas and suggestions which we have already forwarded to the Prime Minister and to the Minister for Health (although we have not to date received any response other than the formulaic one.)

We have started a blog at http://needmoregps.blogspot.com/ to publicise the campaign and act as a focus for the debate we have to have if this problem is to be solved. We do not need or want any more analysis of the problem. We welcome your suggestions and comments.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Janet Clarkson.
Logan Road General Practice
Stones Corner
Brisbane
3394 3622
0417 718 375

The Financial Review.

Doctor's jab sullies watershed moment.

Laura Tingle of The Australian Financial Review has seen fit to comment on our grass roots campaign; the article is in the Opinion section, page 83, in today's edition. Here is an extract:

"Not everyone in Australia loves Kevin Rudd at the moment. At home in his seat of Griffith, a grass roots campaign has begun to try to get some action on a chronic shortage of doctors.

Local patients and GPs have started a website called needmoregps.blogspot.com/ because shortages of doctors-and difficulties experienced by local clinics with the bureaucracy in hiring overseas trained doctors – are claimed to threaten two clinics, leaving 7,500 patients without a doctor.

This isn’t some remote part of Australia but suburban Brisbane in the spotlight, and the PM’s own electorate to boot.

The locals have been underwhelmed with the response from Rudd so far.

In a week in which the Prime Minister is setting off around the world to establish his credentials as a middle-power statesman, and hosting a significant Council of Australian Governments meeting why are we so concerned about doctor shortages in Griffith?

Because in a ‘six degrees of separation’ way, they show how all international and federal politics – and all that talk that seems to be going on – can ultimately rebound locally.

Australia’s reputation abroad after last year’s Haneef affair has made it hard to attract over seas trained doctors to Queensland.

Even the ones who are here and determined to stay are being driven made by bureaucratic processes in which states don’t seem to have had adequate records of who has worked where and, even if they have, require different qualifications for registration in other states.

There is also the issue of which areas are declared as areas of medical workforce shortage – areas that get precedence in the placement of overseas trained doctors. The electorate of Griffith isn’t one of them, so even overseas trained doctors who live in the area have to go and work in areas of designated shortage in the bush."

From the Local Newspaper ....

STONES CORNER, March 26: "When it comes to improving Australia's health system, as Prime Minister, the buck will stop with me.''

Those were the words Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used in the lead-up to last year's Federal election to convince voters he was the best person to tackle the country's health system.
Four months after being elected, the Member for Griffith has dodged questions on his plans for fixing a shortage of General Practitioners in his own electorate.

Read the remainder of the article HERE.