Madam, - Dr Ruari Hanley, in his letter of December 18th, rightly draws attention to the state of imminent collapse of Irish general practice because of the inadequate number of new doctors coming on stream.
He expects nothing to change due to the head-in-the sand approach of both training bodies and particularly of the HSE - which, no one should forget, has complete responsibility for ensuring that each area of the country has a sufficient number of GPs.
I had a sense of déjà vu when reading his letter as The Irish Timespublished a letter from myself in February 2005 making the same points. Nothing has happened in the interim to even begin to address these issues.
Eithne Donnellan's review of the health service and its numerous crises in 2007 (The Irish Times, December 22nd) contains no mention of any problems in general practice or primary care in general. I would wager now that her review next year and those of the next decade will be dominated by the issue.
2008 will be the year when new people moving to my town will be unable to access a GP. The existing practices will close their lists to all but current patients as they now operate at or beyond what anybody could reasonably judge to be full safe capacity. I haven't the slightest doubt that this situation will be replicated around the country.
Even worse, many practices like my own will be forced to restrict their practice lists even further and withdraw services to existing patients in the next few years due to three inescapable factors: the impending retirement of many (mostly male) doctors; their replacement with an insufficient number of (largely female) doctors, who will choose to work less onerous hours; the decision by a many remaining GPs (myself included) to reduce their workloads to avoid personal burnout and to protect themselves from the barely concealed hostility towards the profession of the new Medical Practitioners Act.
General practitioners have been the glue keeping an appallingly administered health service from collapsing completely over the last decade. Their work has largely been unsung and certainly has not been appreciated politically or administratively. The next 10 years are certain to be very different. - Yours, etc,
Dr SHANE CORR, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan.