Results 3,901-3,920 of 11,255 for speaker:Colm Burke

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: I thank the witnesses for making the time available to us, for their presentation this morning, and for the discussion paper published in October. It has a lot of very good information and it is about planning the way forward. I am coming from a scenario I saw some five years ago when I was in the UK. At the time there were more than 5,000 GP vacancies there. In the area we were in,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Are we talking about less than 10%?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Okay. With 285 qualifying next year the important thing is to take the right steps to encourage them to stay here in Ireland and to make sure there are proper structures in place for them.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: On the numbers, in four years' time how many new people will have qualified? Are we talking about 932? If we take into account the two-year training programme that was referred to, what kind of targets are we setting for four years' time?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Over the next four years, would the college see itself having 300 coming out every year?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: On a few occasions I have come across people who have found the whole work situation in the hospital extremely stressful and they want to step back into doing GP work. What is the training programme for someone who has spent five, six or seven years in hospital training, who decided it was not for them and decided to go back into the GP scheme? Is the training for them still four years?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: What kinds of numbers are we talking about where that is arising?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Were these actually dropping out of the hospital system?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: I have come across people who have been in training for as long as nine years and decided the stress levels in the hospitals, and the demands made on them in the hospitals are forcing them out. They have they decided that life is short enough and that going down the road of GP training is the best road for them.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: I accept that. The areas I am talking about are probably the areas that have high litigation levels such as in obstetrics and gynaecology. These are the areas where people are finding it extremely stressful to work. The other is in orthopaedics.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Reference was made to doubling the nurses working in GP practices. If we decide to double the numbers of nurses in GP practices, it must be noted there is a challenge at the moment in getting nurses. It is obviously something I am very much in favour of because there is a lot of work that GPs are doing that nurses are really well trained to do. The problem is that we may end up taking...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: How do we increase the number of training places for nurses to deal with this new demand? If the Department decided in the morning that an additional 2,000 nurses were to be recruited for GP practices, how would that demand be met?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: One of the other challenges arising in the medical service is that, because very large companies in Ireland are receiving non-stop complaints from their employees that they cannot get access to GPs, private companies are now taking on GPs in a full-time capacity. Does the Irish College of General Practitioners, ICGP, see that as another challenge we are going to face over the next two to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: I am talking about big companies like the IT companies, the medical devices companies and the pharmaceutical companies physically employing a GP to look after their employees. Does the ICGP see that as a growing trend because of the problems those companies are having in holding onto staff? This is an additional plus they can offer staff.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: What is the ICGP's view on the timescale? In what kind of timescale would it like to see the task force reporting?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Has the task force formally been set up at this stage?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Is there someone within the Department who has taken on responsibility for-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: -----the connection with all of the organisations involved, including the Irish Medical Organisation and the ICGP? Has there been discussion with them to ensure the terms of reference can be signed off on by, for example, the end of January?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: Does Mr. Foy believe we can actually get this signed off by the end of January? If it is not signed off on by all of the organisations by the end of January, it is going to drag into February and then into March. I am a bit concerned about the time it takes Departments to set up reviews and then to get them working.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Recruitment, Retention and Manpower Planning Issues: Irish College of General Practitioners (14 Dec 2022)

Colm Burke: The committee should write to the Minister and ask that timelines be set out for the review to be signed off on, established and got up and running and functioning.