Where Have All The Doctor’s Gone?
I am finding myself increasingly frustrated at the inaccessibility of Doctor’s in Melbourne at the moment. I live a mere 9Kms from the CBD and have encountered the following:
- I cannot get into any Doctors surgeries in the area as they all have closed books. When I rang one surgery they gave me an appointment only to renege when they discovered I was a new patient.
- I cannot get same day appointments at the bulk billing clinic which will take me, even for sick children.
- At the bulk billing clinic I wait an average of 1hr to be seen, even when I make an appointment. There are only two doctors at this clinic who I am willing to trust which doesn’t help.
- I can go the bulk billing clinic before 10.30am as a “walk in” and be seen by my preferred doctor. This is the best option for me as he priorities people with small children, however I am conscious that this then throws out the appointments of everyone else.
In some regards I know I shouldn’t complain, waiting for doctors seems to be the status quo (not through any fault of the doctors). But, when the health of my children are involved it does become worrisome.
Early last week I became concerned that Bear was becoming dehydrated. After calling Nurse-On-Call (as opposed to the Maternal & Child Health Line which, while good, has a wait time of over one hour to get through, most of the time making the service redundant) they advised that I needed to take Bear to the Doctor within the next 4 hours as they too believed that he was becoming dehydrated.
Rang the doctors surgery.
No there were no appointments.
When I told them what the nurse had said they agreed that he needed to be seen by a Doctor.
Yes, you heard right. They agreed he needed to see a Doctor but they couldn’t give me an appointment.
Am I living in loopy-ville? This is a not-yet-5-month-old-baby we are talking about.
After weighing up the options I decided to give him some extra feeds and pay close attention to his nappies and at the end of the day called the Nurse on Call line again and we all agreed he was fine. It was likely a combination of him coming down with a cold and me not being used to boys nappies.
But, what if he wasn’t?
Yes, I could have gone to a clinic or hospital and waited hours to be seen not to mention clogging up an already stretched system. I could have dragged my toddler there and endured all sorts of fun times until I was ready to poke my eyes out with a stick. Yes, I could have done that AND I would have done that had it gotten worse.
But, surely it’s reasonable to think that as I live in a council that has had the largest baby boom in the city over the past 4 years that perhaps there would be enough doctors to go around? Yes, I know this is a first world problem & I should get over myself because at least we have “free” health care and good doctors. Yes, but we also have exhausted, overstretched, under-resourced doctors working crazy hours because demand is greater than supply.
Adding to this last night my girlfriend called an ambulance for her 5month old son and it didn’t come. I know ambulances are triaged, and rightly so, but surely a 5 month old baby is considered a priority!
What is happening to our health care system? When Victoria is supposed to offer one of the better services in our country, I am very, very concerned.
Mummble
Stitch Baby + Kids
When I first saw your post I thought you must live out in the bush somewhere. There, I could understand a shortage of doctors, but I wonder if you might be better off in the bush!
That is a pretty sad state of affairs. I have occasionally had this problem, but never to that extent. I do have a regular GP, no I can’t always get in there on the day, but I can get in somewhere. I do have to wait weeks to see my preferred GP, but that’s just to follow up and review my ongoing health issues.
I would keep ringing those private surgeries and bug them until you get on their books. Sooner or later someone has to die and make room for you, surely!
Dorothy recently posted..Out of my life
Thanks Dorothy, you’re right it’s totally crazy! Will keep pursuing…the thing that really worries me is that what if I had had PND or something, finally managed to get up the courage to ring a DR only to find out that I couldn’t easily get in anywhere. Would I have kept ringing? How many woman are facing that??
I can relate to this! It is obviously becoming an big issue.
My 20mth old son too suffered dehydration late December. We took him to Emergency at 1am and had he not vomited all over the floor, my husband and a sofa… he probably would have sat there another 2 hours.
I was also left unseen to when I first started breastfeeding; we had to go onto formula because I just couldnt get anyone available to help {it was Easter mind you, and they did book me an with a nurse…. in 3 and a half weeks…. thats a LONG time not to feed a NEWBORN!
Understandably no ones fault, its just a matter as you say; more demand than supply. Sad.
Carly Webber recently posted..Back on Track
Emergency is just crazy – the wait times are extarodinary and I understand why, for lots of people there’s nowhere else to go even though it’s not actually an emergency. Last yr my husband came of his bike on his way to work, went to DR who sent him to hospital where he waited 8 HOURS! It took almost 3hours for him even to be given some pain relief. Ludicrous!
As for the feeding business, that is maddening and I can imagine that the Drs would be incensed to see you wait that long & yet….
Crazy.
Hugs Lou. thats awful. We have the same issues up here, its generally at least a week wait to see a doctor, and theres no such thing as bulk billing. If you dont have the minimum $80.00, you dont see a Dr.
However, in saying that, if i call the medical centre near me and say Fox has a high temperature that i can get down, they always, always fit him in within the hour
Wow Em, can only imagine. That is nuts! Glad they look out for Fox though, it’s so important when they are so little. x
I found that in inner city Melbourne too, lou. Its a real shame because a good doctor is a real blessing. Amazing that as soon as I return to tasmania I was totally disillusioned about GPs but have had some really excellent experiences here again. I wonder why there are so few of them? Monash Med specialises in Gps for pete’s sake! maybe there is not enough glory in being a GP so ppl become other kinds of specialists….
Yeah, I wonder if it’s an “inner” city thing. We had a great Dr in Camberwell…sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just drive back over there when we need to see someone but it just seems crazy that we’d need to do that…
Not finding a doctor is one thing. But not allowing a few shuffles to make room to see a 5-mo? And probably even worse, an ambulance not turning up??!? That is just scary, scary business. I’m in Melb too (much further out than you, though) and, although I’ve had no need to call an ambulance, I am able to get in to the doctor’s surgery if it’s for my daughter and she’s 4 now! Perhaps I ought to stop complaining about them – for I do find things to gripe over, which I won’t go into here – and be thankful that we at least get in same day, as it must be that clinic’s policy.
Gosh, I am really sorry you can’t find good support. It’s scary enough as it is, raising a baby, let alone realising you don’t have resources there when you need them!
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Thanks Kirrily, you’re so right. As I said to Dorothy, the thing that concerns me most is what if I was a mum on the verge of PND or someone who found calling the Dr really hard – then I ring and can’t get in anywhere. What happens then? And to the kids? It’s scary stuff.
Until last year, I was living in a little town in WA, with one resident doctor. He regularly saw patients from the much larger town, 200 kms away, which had multiple doctors but clearly not enough.
So we weren’t able to get in to to see him, as he’d give priority to those who’d travelled, and I can clearly remember waiting 4 hours one day before walking out in disgust.
This kind of thing seems to be happening right across the country, regardless of whether you live in a rural or urban area.
So where ARE the doctors?
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Gosh, that’s so hard. Wow. You’re right, where are they? I’m pretty sure that wherever they are they are as frustrated by this situation as we are!
glad bubba is on the mend – we don’t have a bulk-billing doctor, and often wait an hour or more to see him, but we don’t have to make an appointment, and at a time when doctors in our area had closed their books, he took us all on. I can make appointments to see his wife if I’m not comfortable seeing him about girl-stuff, but I must admit my small kids have only been to the doctor when absolutely essential, not like with my first when the doctor dropped everything to see her if she was unwell.
thanks Cate. I’ve also found myself much more relaxed this time round, which is good!
I went to the public hospital specialist clinic today – in Melbourne – and got to see the doctors 1.5 hours after my scheduled appointment.
Getting into emergency is ridiculous, esp when my condition is rare and misunderstood (‘what, so you have eczema?’ – no actually it’s much worse). And the GP can’t do a lot.
Thanks for the post :)
Carly Findlay recently posted..On vanity- prejudice and beauty part 1
Wow, that’s full on. I don’t understand why the wait is always so long. I can only imagine that they are so understaffed that they make more appointments than they can realistically get through.
We’re Aussies living in the UK and it’s taken me a while to get used to the National Health Service. When we first arrived I had an asthma attack at 27 months pregnant. We called our doctor and they wouldn’t fit me in for 2 days. Here in the UK you are registered to one surgery and can only go to that surgery – you can’t just ring around and find a centre with a free appointment. Since then I’ve discovered the Urgent Care Walk-In Centre – it’s where you go when your doctor can’t fit you in, and it’s actually really good. I’ve been twice with the kids last week (our Dr. never has same-day appointments) and the waiting time was actually less than at the doctors! Maybe they should have some in Aus.
Oh wow, that’s amazing. 2 days is too long – only one Dr. why? how does that work? I think we all need to move to France! I go to a similar place to the Urgent Care centre you mention but unforuntately the Drs there aren’t all great so even though sometimes I can get an appt there I’m not willing to because I don’t trust the quality of care. Hmmm…. interesting.
My toddler is almost 3 and at this stage, the only doctors visit he has had was when he was a few weeks old and he had the first post birth checkup to check his heart was ok and hips aligned etc (can’t really remember what else).
Since then we have visited a homeopath on a regular basis and in his short little life he has had one tummy bug (no vomiting) and a handful of sniffly nosed colds. He had eczema from about 3 months to about 18 months.
All of these complaints have been handled by our homeopath (& my continued breastfeeding, which I’m still doing).
On the flip side, my daughter started having seizures when she was 6 months old and we had numerous visits to doctors, the childrens’ hospital, around 10 emergency ambulance callouts and subsequent visits to the hospital up until the last month before she died at 13 months of age.
I hated the feelings of inadequacy during that time with my daughter & I swore that everything would be different with my next child (which it truly has been).
So I have experienced the doctor side and the non doctor side.
When I step back and review the whole situation, I feel that there are many instances where parents, if empowered with the correct knowledge (by not just doctors but other healthcare practitioners such as naturopaths, homeopaths, chiropractors, osteopaths etc), could deal with certain situations with their children themselves, avoiding the need to visit a doctor.
I feel that this would make room in the healthcare system for the times where a visit is truly necessary and hence avoiding what Louisa talks about where she can’t get an appointment when she really needs it.
When your children are unwell, parenting becomes scary and overwhelming because you feel so out of control. There are ways to alleviate that “out of control” feeling for parents. It’s time these measures were implemented.
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I think that’s a really interesting point & it certainly seems that people do visit the Dr for things that aren’t important or because they are lonely. It’s a hard balancing act but I guess the one thing we can do is make sure that we only go to the Dr & to emergency when we need to. I’ve heard of ppl calling ’000′ to have an ambulance give them panadol becuase it’s free as opposed to buying it. Perhaps more education on this issues would help?
I can’t believe your friend called an ambulance and it didn’t come. She should call talk-back radio! this is outrageous.
Gllad Bear was better but I’m angry about what happened to you. Living in the same area as you – I always feel the great competition for all services. Maybe when the census results come through for this year, the government planners will wake up a little.
I know it,s a bit crazy! I sure hope you are right about the census. There are a lot of services nowhere near up to scratch in our area atm – as you well know!’
p.s. I love that you suggest talk back – so “un’you” it’s brilliant!
Wow…. I have been really lucky then. Our Doctor’s surgery near by bulk bills and they have at least 5 doctors during the day and 2 on the weekend for walk ins. I always complain that they never see me after 1 hour of waiting but after reading this, I know not to complain anymore.
It’s all relative though. A 1hr wait with a baby or small child is a LONG time.