Have GP card. I think I need to change GP.

Sue Ellen said:

Surely its more G.P.s that's needed and not just more training. The addition by the Government of free medical care for young children has made the situation harder to manage too.

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Agreed but you have to complete the GP training scheme to become a GP (which comes after your medical degree + intern year etc).
Getting a training place is competitive with limited spaces so hopefully more training places will lead to more doctors being admitted to the scheme and becoming GPs.

Agree on the expansion of free GP care placing extra strain on the system too unfortunately.

Incremental increased free GP care is the direction of travel I believe for all major parties so will likely slowly expand further creating more demand.

Any doctors my adult children went to school with are all overseas working conditions in Ireland really seem difficult. I relate to much of the op sentiments our GP was oversubscribed and had missed some things. I suppose it was complacency and inertia on my part but I never moved. The primary doctor retired and the practice has been since taken over and is definitely better.

I think it is something I inherited from my parents where we always deferred to doctors. I have learnt the hard way to advocate for family members when necessary. I have experienced how hard and committed most doctors are and definitely how completely under resourced emergency medicine departments here are. I have developed the skills to question, query and not always defer to what we are being told. I do think we know are our own family members best and with the state of the system here we are obliged to be both our own and our family members advocates. If that means complaining then it is important to do so, never rude or obnoxious but I think this is relevant to GP services also.

The shortage isn’t from a recruitment embargo it’s from a lack of doctors training as GPs. The GP rep body has been talking about it for a while.
Doctors don’t want to take that option.

bill_cash said:

There is none that I'm aware of, there is an embargo on many parts of the HSE which is lifting but GPs are private businesses who may provide services contracted to the public system and are not impacted. There has recently been an uptick in training schemes offered for GPs which is great but will take a number of years to improve the situation.

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That was what I was getting at, it's a complete misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the issue wrapped up in a little racist nonsense.

Anyone who thinks a recruitment embargo is a good idea when immigrants are streaming in from Ukraine and multiple third world countries needs to sit in an ED for a few hours and have their eyes opened. Our hospitals are strained beyond capacity and that will lead to more adverse outcomes for patients. Ireland is now continuously utilising private hospitals routinely to get public patients their elective surgeries. That is not the way things were 10 years ago. People don’t realise the impact of immigration on healthcare as it doesn’t make the news unless someone dies in ED of sepsis etc. By not recruiting to HSE run centres it impacts on GPs as the system is overloaded everywhere and people can’t access their healthcare needs. Operations are also being scheduled in Northern Ireland private hospitals. Where do we send patients to next for capacity ? Another problem I hear of is patients being discharged too quickly as the pressure on hospital staff to free up beds is immense. Hence back to the GP and the whole backlog restarts.

Agree with some of your analysis, but, the overcrowding in HSE and GP is as old as the hills - and definitely 10yrs ago A&E and access to care was very VERY bad. More akin to a MASH hospital conditions.

so , Please dont blame the victims of war for our ills. Many of us were delighted to get our prescriptions for inhalers given, teeth filled , teeth pulled, all free and thanks to the NHS whilst living in tents in back gardens of 2 up 2 down cottages in Kilburn & Criklewood whilst mixing muck and pulling cable and hoping to be picked as horses at 6am outside the Crown the next morning

With my parents in and out of all main hospitals in the 1980's & 1990s we were very familiar with Vincents, Beuamont, Mater, Wexford, St Lukes Kilkenny, Arkeen Waterford and Cork & Limerick hospitals , I can assure you the hybrid system we have produces the worst of all worlds.

Minister of Health Brian Cowen didnt call the dept "Angola" in c.2002 for no reason and no sign of Putin anywhere!.

Well from the inside and outside things are worse in my view. You can’t leave borders to our healthcare system open to all arrivals for free without putting adequate resources in place. But that’s what our government have done and will continue to do. They care little for the average tax paying citizen. Expect more headlines and more adverse outcomes. I predict more and more medics, nurses and allied health professionals will exit as the demands are too great on them. Mind your health and don’t expect things to run smoothly if you have a health issue. I would like to hear a review of the HSE agency bill if anyone is inclined. They love to hire on agency but won’t convert the posts to permanent even though the agency fees are exhorbitant. Like the fees going to asylum accommodation no one seems to have any hold on the purse strings. The tax payer takes the hit again and again.

Agree with sentiments, but funnily enough, I used to go out with a blonde beauty from Temple St in 1994, who became an agency nurse, so the issue of staffing is as old as the hills as is the appalling conditions...Temple St is still in use, despite all of the talk in the '90s that it would close similar to Harcourt Childrens hosp merged with the "new" hospital...
PS
the new Hosp was called Tallaght Hosp- its still the newest one 30rs later !!!.

Mamamia22 said:

You can’t leave borders to our healthcare system open to all arrivals for free without putting adequate resources in place.

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The resourcing, and relatively poor performance of the Irish healthcare system given the massive funding it does have is adequately dealt with in other threads, If you have something more than xenophobia to add, then perhaps contribute in the relevant threads.

I didn’t think our borders were open, well no more than the rest of the EU.

Access to healthcare in France is limited…ish…you have to be in the system. But all bets are off in A&E of course. Or should passports and NI contributions be checked before treatment? How many contributions before they can get treatment?

And I don’t think anyone would advocate refusing emergency medical assistance to anyone, imagine the inconvenience of stepping over the dead bodies!

I had a discussion with my own GP when he retired. He was already 10 years past pension age when he decided to call it a day.
He said that nobody wants to do the job anymore when it comes to the countryside or small towns. You have to be on duty nearly all the time- and not many would put up with such a lifestyle anymore. Services and everything in general is below what is offered in big cities- so many decide not to take over an existing clinic. And there is the pay. The country is still bankrupt- no matter how you want to dress up the current situation. So there won't be any pay improvements either- which in turn makes any future doctor to move abroad. You end up with an ever decreasing number of doctors- and that won't change either if you expel every single foreigner out of the country!
The situation is exactly the same in all European countries- no matter how many foreigners moved there. Some folks have the tendency to look for scapegoats when they find no other outlet for their frustrations. So those people come in handy for them.
The trouble is: All that shouting about "armies of young men coming in through our open borders" leads to nothing. If you want services, you need to pay for them. That means higher taxes. Much much higher taxes! There is no other way.
And could somebody explain to me why "healthy young men of military age who should not be here at all" clog up our health service? There is something fundamentally wrong in that talk!

Forumuser said:

The situation is exactly the same in all European countries- no matter how many foreigners moved there. Some folks have the tendency to look for scapegoats when they find no other outlet for their frustrations.

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It's an incontrovertible fact that population increases increase demand.

There has been access issues in Irish healthcare for a long time.
Increased population without concomitant increases in capacity is exacerbating existing access issues.

Some immigration papers over the cracks in the system (for example foreign medical staff).

Some immigration has both positive and negative effects on the system - foreign high skilled workers making a net tax contribution after all social supports given are accounted for. They add net income to pay for services but increase demand.

Some immigration is a disaster for the health care system - low skilled/welfare dependent net takers from the state's resources. These will be a mix of people on welfare but also those working in lower paid jobs reliant on social supports such as fis, social housing etc. This group increases demand but does not directly improve capacity by working in the system and drains tax resources which could pay others to work in the system.

Logically, for the benefit of average Irish citizens using the health system entry of the final group into the system/state should be robustly discouraged.

Where this does not happen it is rightly annoying citizens in Ireland and other EU welfare states who are negatively impacted. Similar groupings apply to housing, education, etc

We have no option for some low skill/welfare dependent immigrants I think, like from within the EU.

Actually what happens there? People can move freely within EU, they apply for an NI number etc… collect dole and use hospitals and GPs… does the Irish state apply to their home country for reimbursement for health costs?

To bring it back to the OP's original question, firstly you have to find a GP that will accept you. Then there is a form to be filled out

I presume after that a new card gets issued