Community spotlight – Goondiwindi

A rural town crying out for doctors

Facing a GP shortage

Nestled on the banks of the Macintyre River is Goondiwindi, a rural Queensland town not far from the New South Wales border. It boasts beautiful country landscapes and proud heritage buildings, and also happens to be the location of one of our upcoming GPs4RuralDocs clinics.

Dr John Buckley, one of our Treating GPs, will travel to Goondiwindi to provide GP services for the health practitioners that have dedicated themselves to this town.

But we didn’t pick Goondiwindi for its beautiful backdrop. Like many other rural towns around Australia, the Goondiwindi community faces a looming health crisis with its dire shortage of GPs. So much so that the Goondiwindi Medical Centre have recently put together their own doctor recruitment video in a creative bid to attract health professionals to the town.

Goondiwindi has 4.2 full-time equivalent GPs serving 14,000 patients.
The recommended GP to patient ratio is 1:1000.
Goondiwindi should have 14 full-time GPs.

Attracting and retaining doctors can be hard for rural towns like Goondiwindi

Dr Sue Masel, is Practice Owner and GP at the Goondiwindi Medical Centre and she also works at the Goondiwindi Hospital. She understands too well the challenges in attracting new doctors, as retaining doctors can be just as hard in rural communities.

Sue explains how the town only recently lost three doctors.

“Goondiwindi Medical Centre recently had two senior GP trainees decide to move on to other opportunities rather than stay, and one long term GP left to relocate to Tasmania where she grew up,” she says. “We currently have 4.2 full time equivalent GPs serving a population of 14,000 active patients and we are the only practice in Goondiwindi.”

Sue points out that the recommended GP to patient ratio is 1:1000. “So, we should have 14 GPs,” she says.

“The pressure of work is unrelenting and the idea of having to take a day off due to illness is actually anxiety provoking because you know that about 20 of those patients have waited months for their appointments and removing the other acute ‘book on the day’ appointments, which were also in your diary will increase the pressure on everybody else. There is also nowhere to rebook anybody you cancel due to personal illness.”

Why many doctors are leaving rural practice

There can be many contributing factors to GPs leaving rural practice. And one that is becoming all too common is the fact that rural GPs struggle to look after their own health needs.

What happens when a doctor needs a doctor, and the nearest one is over 300 kilometres away? Should any doctor be forced to consult a colleague, supervisor or friend about personal health concerns?

These are the questions that plague rural health practitioners who are just as human as the rest of us – yes, they get sick too and deserve the same level of health care that any patient would receive. This is often not possible due to the current challenges of isolation and distance.

“Rural practice is not without its challenges,” says Sue. “One of those is accessing health care for yourself. I respect the skills and experience of my colleagues. But when it comes to my own health care, I need separation between being a doctor and a patient. So prior to the GPs4RuralDocs program coming to Goondiwindi, I chose to travel to Brisbane for my own health care.”

For Sue, this was a 700-kilometre roundtrip.

“It takes me away from my family and my patients. And because of the need to replace me with a doctor trained in anaesthetics to be there for the community, it often means my own visit to see a GP is delayed,” she adds.

Why GPs4RuralDocs is so essential for towns like Goondiwindi

With the arrival of Dr John Buckley and the GPs4RuralDocs service in Goondiwindi, we hope to solve this problem for doctors like Sue Masel, in turn helping practices like the Goondiwindi Medical Centre attract new doctors to the town.

“The opportunity to be a recipient of the kind of care you provide every day has the potential to make an enormous difference to us and our communities,” says Sue.

But there are many more towns around Australia that we cannot reach yet, without the funding we need to expand the GPs4RuralDocs service.

A monthly or one-off donation will help us in our mission to support towns like Goondiwindi and give all rural Australians access to the health care they deserve.