It follows a recent report from the Irish College of General Practitioners
Concerns have been raised nationwide about shortages of GPs.
It follows a recent report from the Irish College of General Practitioners which outlined an acute shortage of GPs in certain areas of the country.
GPs and their nurses do about 29 million consultations per year, equating to 100,000 per day, with many counties falling below the ratio of 100 GPs for every 100,000 people.
Speaking on Kildare Today, Dr Deirdre Collins, founding partner of Kilcullen Family Practice and former chairperson of the ICGP, said that her practice is very aware of the issue:
"We are very aware of the information and this issue, I've been in general practice in this area for a long time, we are aware of the challenges that the public, the patients and the practices and the doctors are facing at the moment."
Dr Collins was confident in the amount of doctors in training across the country, stressing that there is very high retention rates:
"We are producing lots of doctors as well as trained GPs, our trainee numbers have risen dramatically, we had 170 in 2017 and we now have 350.
She also was defiant in the fact that GPs who train in an area, will stay there for work:
"They're not leaving, we have very high retention rates of our trainees, we also know that if they train in Kildare, they'll stay in Kildare.
GPs who train in the area tend to stay because they form relationships with the practice and they may move to the area, and they stay with us."
Dr Collins remarked that the nature of the practice is changing, claiming that people's expectations of care have "hugely changed".
"The type of work is changing as well, when i started working, you would see a lot of patients but it was just one issue, it was reactive.
But now, people's expectation of care have hugely changed in that time, they want to be healthier for the rest of their lives, don't want to chat about the same problem. The ability of a GP to see the numbers we would've seen years ago have changed, and that's good."
The full interview can be heard below:
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