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davidc4430 · ‎01-02-2020

Patients in Mount Isa go to emergency room or use home-remedies as regional GP shortage worsens

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-01/gp-shortage-in-regional-towns-getting-worse/11905918

as i live in a pretty rural area and i vist the doctor a lot i notice 1 thing

seeing an australian born doctor is darn hard!

when i first came to live in wallyworld i must have seen 5 or 6 non aussie born doctors who for the most part i couldnt inderstand what they were saying!

they may have been great doctors but if the patient cant get what they are telling him or her it just not ok

i now have a lovely guy taking care of me, understands me and i can understand him, hes australian.

he has no plans to move from the area which makes my life much better.

he sees himself as a rural GP and loves it.

i have no issue with bringing in doctors from other countries but its being over done, lets get back to training our own and bringing in foreign doctors to help them learn then go home.

i hate the whole 'you get what you get' when you want a doctor.

my brother visited the emergency room at the wallaroo hospital about a week ago, all the nures and the doctor were non australians.

when i was there with him i didnt see any australian doctors or nurses.

they did a fine job as far as i was concerned but, why no australians?

channys_mum · ‎01-02-2020

Actually you can get a decent latte in the country. Queen Mary Falls Cafe Qld. Shocked my socks off. Was expecting flat white with a bit of froth, no the real McCoy.

Blessed are the cracked, for they are the ones who let in the light.

lurker172602 · ‎02-02-2020

@myoclon1cjerk wrote:
Or curry 🙂

Not true. My little town has a few really good coffee shops (and a couple not so good, but you get that) AND we have one of the best Indian restaurants I have eaten at.

springyzone · ‎02-02-2020

@lyhargr_0 wrote:
@springyzone wrote:

What i find annoying is I've seen comments that we have 'too many doctors' but I think what is happening is they are restricting the ones (in Australia) who qualify to get into medical courses. They have to have scores around 99.8% or some such thing.
Personally, I think we should have many more Australian students (of whatever racial background) admitted to courses. I would say that anyone with a score of 95% could end up as competent as a 99% scorer. I suspect they restrict numbers mainly because they want to protect their income streams.
It wouldn't be that hard to build in incentives for medical students to spend a year in rural centres or towns after graduation.

That happens now, we get quite a few who as part of their training, come for a yr or so and off they go, they just wont stay in a small country town ..... The cpl of doctors we do have, need to split their time between 2 practices 30km apart. There have been days when we have had no medical service cause there is no doctor avail that day. When that happens, the only alternative is to drive to the hospital 30km away, not that easy, if you arent feeling all that great.

It doesnt seem to matter whether doctors are Au/Overseas born or trained, no matter what incentives are offered, they just WONT come to the bush,

I agree, it would really suck to have to travel 30kms to a hospital when all you need is a doctor's appointment.

I think we'd see a lot more look for work in the country if we had a lot more graduating. At the moment, (here in Melbourne), the population is being pushed up every week with migration. The various services-transport, education, medical etc- are all under a bit of stress in the outer growth suburbs.

To give you an example, my daughter lives in a suburb where a normal, relatively new primary school this year had an intake of several hundred prep students.

The upshot of that is that doctors (and most teachers) probably don't have to consider positions out in woop woop because there is enough work in the suburbs.

Now, if migration numbers were to slow down a little and the number of students being accepted into medical school were to improve dramatically, over time we might see a situation where a steady job in the country or at least a regional centre might look more attractive than struggling to get enough work in the city.

I was reading an online article a while back that suggested GP's would become a dying breed, out of work within a generation, as technology took over a lot of their tasks eg diagnosis. Not sure how true that will turn out to be though, I never completely trust predictions, they usually get the time line wrong, even if the facts are true.

davidc4430 · ‎02-02-2020

i really think the problem of lack of australian GPs comes from the fact after doing the hard yards at doctor school most young grads decide to go the 'specialist' route

where the big money and easier work load is.