>>Do you envision one GPassist type dr per rural hospital or would one, or a >>couple possibly cover multiple hospitals? >>Good luck and then can we tackle the problem of not having rural >GPs at all? >> > >Jan, no offense intended, but these 2 questions show >no understanding of rural general practice or the present >crisis where there are far too few rural GPs (the vast >majority now being overseas trained doctors who have >been poached from their countries of training).
No offense taken but I fail to see how these two questions would demonstrate an "ignorance" of the rural shortage and burden. I certainly do understand the shortage and many of the reasons why GPs and in fact many members of society don't wish to make tree changes. Our own local GP is nearing 70 and the poor man has been trying desperately for the last 2 years to retire but hasn't. His colleague with the only other practice in our council area is also in same position. We speak about it often; a couple of attempts to sell the practice have fallen through. I think the GPassist and use of IMIT is of great benefit and just wanted clarification on your statement "Then this rural hospital RN would ring the "GPassist" GP rather than disturb the local GP" regarding ratio of GPassist to rural hospital because I too think 1-1 is impractical and unnecessary. I believe GPAT has 1 triage dr during the week and 2 on weekends. GPassist programs do allow rural GPs to get some sleep and even go on holiday. I do recognise they cannot 'replace' GPs so I was interested in how "the rural communities would attract and keep their GPs" once they were assured of having a reliable after-hour or assist system in place. It hasn't seemed to work thus far in my local area. I also realise your proposal differs from Tassie's GPassist but there do seem to be some similarities with the protocol and use of VPN; the glaring difference being that we did not attend the local rural hospital to see a trained RN for triage, the electronic medical record is started at the 'call centre' and that the Tas program does cover the whole gamut of RRMA classifications. Anyway, I do wish you luck, in all sincerity and keep us posted with the outcomes. Jan _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
