AN INCURABLE ILLNESS?

I want to take you back in time. To a more simple time and place. When we were kids, and if you got sick and had to stay home from school, you didn’t go to the doctor. The doctor came to you. Your local doctor made house calls. He was not only your GP –he was virtually a family friend.

They not only dispensed pills and potions. They dispensed advice and homilies. They were revered in the community. Up there with the bank manager. 

How things have changed. Not only are doctors who do house calls a dying breed (if you’ll excuse the expression) but just finding one who can add you to his or her patient list is a mission in itself.

I’m not knocking doctors here. In recent years I have spent more time in doctor’s surgeries and hospitals than many people and I admire the dedication and commitment and long hours of people in all branches of the medical profession.

But waiting lists are long. Appointments hard to schedule because there aren’t enough doctors to go around. And it is going to get worse.

According to a story in The Age by Mark Metherell the search for a local doctor is going to get tougher because more and more medical graduates are choosing the more lucrative fields of specialised medicine.

Understandably. The earning capacity for specialists is far greater than for a GP.
According to an OECD report the number of specialists in developed countries has risen by 60 per cent in the past 17 years. And there are other ominous figures to worry about.

Australia has fewer doctors compared to most other developed countries, with 2.8 practicing doctors per 1000 people which is below the OECD average of 3.1. And, the number of hospital beds per capita is lower than the Western average.

The question I suppose is why be a GP? The job is getting harder rather than easier. A GP has to be far more knowledgeable these days than his or her counterpart twenty years ago. And the pay is nowhere near the league of a specialist.

The experts are predicting that the trend will "eventually translate into a genuine crisis". So what’s the answer?

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009