Doctors want action to ensure proper rural medical services
THE Wonca World Rural Health Conference 2022, held in Limerick over the weekend, saw delegates endorse a call by the Rural Island and Dispensing Doctors of Ireland (RIDDI) for government to guarantee that Irish rural practice is sustainable into the future by ensuring as a first step that sufficient medical practitioners are retained and supported in rural areas so that all vacant and locum-run rural and remote area GP panels are filled as a matter of urgency.
This is necessary to ensure rural populations continue to obtain a proper standard of medical care.
Due to serious issues with the recruitment and retention of rural practitioners in the most isolated rural areas and on the offshore islands, RIDDI urged that these isolated solo practices should instead operate with a second GP appointed to them and be fully resourced by the HSE.
Mulranny-based Dr. Jerry Cowley is a member of RIDDI and in a statement set out how supporting the 15% of older people who will end up needing full time care in congregated settings is integral to the work of rural medical practitioners, as is the dispensing of medicines in areas where it is not economically feasible for a pharmacist to operate. Both need to be fully supported and developed further for the sake of rural dwellers.
The recent Covid-19 experience has shown the value of cooperation, including the sharing of expertise and financial resources between rural medical practitioners, long-stay care providers, the Health Service Executive (HSE), and government, which has enabled local services to be supported and sustained throughout the pandemic.
RIDDI urges that this cooperation needs to be continued into the future.
The organisation has also called for the restoration of the distance codes system, the abolition of which has amounted to a massive disincentive to rural practice as a career choice for young medical practitioners.
RIDDI is confident that adopting the aforementioned will not only stop the exodus of medical practitioners from rural Ireland, but will actually reverse it.