Islanders hear of problem in trying to recruit doctor
ROSS of Mull residents have been told a new GP cannot be forced to live in the area.
Some 70 Mull and Iona islanders gathered at Bunessan Hall on Monday May 9 for a question and answer session with NHS Highland, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Localities Planning Group to ask: ‘ What’s happening to our healthcare?’
Campaigners from the Ross of Mull Patient Participation Group (PPG) decked the packed hall with posters, including a nine-point ‘ we need’ list calling for a ‘resident GP, integrated emergency transport, resident practice nurse, local practice manager, a vulnerable households audit, emergency plan, clarity of GP out- of-hours, improved 111’, and ‘improved patient opinion forms’.
Ross resident and PPG member Minty MacKay said: ‘We need a resident doctor. We feel like we haven’t been listened to.’
And Anne Baxter asked: ‘Why has it taken two years to get a doctor? People have suffered.’
Dr Richard Wilson, primary care clinical lead for the Oban, Lorn and Isles Locality, replied: ‘It’s been identified as a need, and we’re trying to address it.’
Mull and Iona Medical Group plans an integrated ‘hub and spoke’ model for the islands’ primary care services, with ‘spoke’ GP practices in Salen, Tobermory, the Ross of Mull and Iona, and an out- of-hours GP based at the community hospital in Craignure. However, residents are concerned they will not receive out- of-hours emergency care within an hour and, as reported in The Oban
Times last week, gave a vote of no confidence in the Scottish Ambulance Service’s side of the plans.
Dr Wilson told the Bunessan Hall meeting: ‘We are not going to be changing surgery hours. You will have one principal doctor servicing the Ross of Mull and Iona. We would like our fourth doctor to be based in Bunessan.
‘If that doctor chooses to live here, brilliant, but we cannot legally force them because the model is a single island-wide service.
‘We are not here to save money,’ he explained. ‘ A remote, isolated, single-handed service is not a good way to provide primary care. If you’ve got an integrated service, you can provide healthcare to Iona, Bunessan and to Tobermory.’
A resident replied: ‘ You’re effectively grouping together into an integrated service Glasgow, Gretna Green and Carlisle. The travel distances are the same. When you say ‘Isle of Mull’, it sounds very neat but you’re not taking account of the distances and that’s what people are trying to say.’
The model, Dr Wilson said, would give patients a choice of doctor but one resident replied: ‘If you lived in Bunessan, you wouldn’t care.’
Recruiting rural GPs, Dr Wilson explained, was difficult across Scotland. He said: ‘One in five doctors’ practices in Scotland are vacant. If you say you must live down here, you’ll make it less likely to recruit. It was a discussion we had with two doctors to work as an island practice from Bunessan but they declined.’
Annie MacLeod, locality manager for Oban Lorn and Isles, added: ‘ We do not have a line of applicants. It’s the same across the country: there are no doctors. We have to be creative.’
Nevertheless, she added, they were currently pushing hard to recruit.
Future plans, Dr Wilson said, involved setting up an independent practice in the Ross, with a resident practice nurse and manager. ‘ You can work with us to put in place structures to build an independent practice,’ he told the meeting.