According to Rural Doctors Association of Australia president Megan Belot, COVID-19 pressures and chronic overwork have highlighted rural medical care access issues.
This includes the limited appointments and instances of patients being turned away that have been seen in Cobram.
“Before COVID, we always had workplace issues. We always needed more rural generalists, more rural GPs, we always needed more nurses and RNs (registered nurses) that were trained as midwives as well,” Dr Belot said.
“We’ve always been asking for strategies to get more rural doctors to the bush.”
Dr Belot is a rural generalist with advanced skills in anaesthetics and works across the border communities of Echuca, Cohuna and Kerang, providing primary care and emergency medicine alongside her anaesthetics skills.
She said a reliance on locums, or fill-in doctors, alongside increased workloads from COVID-19 and border closures had meant staff members were overwhelmed and exhausted.
For example, a GP might have a regular private practice and do shifts at the local hospital or assist with a COVID-19 vaccination or testing program.
“When we had massive border closures, we didn’t have locums and it really put a strain on the workforce, they’re pretty burnt out and tired,” she said.
“The doctors and nurses are probably at the point where people need a holiday, they’re probably taking the leave they need.”
Emergency departments and urgent care centres have also seen more people coming in, which has meant doctors working longer hours than expected.
Dr Belot encouraged patients to be proactive in booking appointments if they need ongoing care and always go to an emergency department or urgent care if they are severely unwell and unable to get an appointment.
“Just have a little bit of patience because you’re going to take a little bit longer to be seen because everyone’s chock-a-block full,” she said.
“If you are feeling very unwell call the urgent care of the ED (emergency department).”
Dr Belot said a number of short- and medium-to-long-term measures were needed to alleviate doctor strains and patient difficulties.
“If we could get locum cover that would help out a lot ... then people could go on holidays and come back rested, but I fully acknowledge that’s not a 100 per cent solution,” she said.
“Intermediate to long-term solutions are full investment into training more rural doctors, and this needs to happen over the different aspects of training a doctor.”
This includes junior doctors doing rural generalist terms or their full training rurally.
“A lot of our rural and regional hospitals would be well equipped to do this training if they have the funding, they don’t have the funding right now to provide a really good training environment,” she said.
“We could do it, but we could do it a hell of a lot better if we had more funding and support.”
Dr Belot hopes changes come with the upcoming federal election that will bring relief, funding and support to alleviate these long-term issues.
“We’re very focused on the best outcomes with election promises for rural Australia ... many of the things we’re asking for will impact the border communities of Victoria and New South Wales.”
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