Leading towards Health for All
Creating Synergies between Public Health and Primary Care
Keywords: Doctors health. Doctors healthcare. Medical Education. GP Training.
Introduction:
In May 2023 members of the ICGP, GPs and GP Trainees, received an email invitation to participate in a national survey on doctors’ health and doctors’ healthcare. The purpose of the survey is for all ICGP members to have an opportunity to give their opinion on the relevance of a range of doctors’ health and wellbeing topics for GP Training and for continuing professional development for GPs. Training and CPD is focussed on supporting GPs to treat patients; this survey gives members a say on what medical education can help GPs who provide healthcare to patients who are doctors, and to help doctors as patients.
The health and wellbeing of the medical workforce is a key factor in retention of the medical workforce itself. Several factors are associated with intention to leave, early retirement on health grounds and burnout. On the other hand, healthy happy doctors are great ambassadors for the profession, and can improve recruitment.
Method:
The survey is conducted by ICGP in conjunction with Prof Walter Cullen, Department of General Practice, UCD. It was launched nationally online one week ago on 4th May.
Results:
Results will be available in 2023
Conclusions:
Doctors Health and Wellbeing is important in terms of influencing the human factors that govern patient safety and quality of care. The health and healthcare of others depends on the health and healthcare of doctors. For high quality medical care, we need to optimise work performance of doctors by encouraging good work-life balance and access to timely objective healthcare from another doctor when they, as humans, need to avail of healthcare for themselves.
This research project gives every college member an input into how we can improve healthcare for doctors by gathering information on doctors as patients and doctors who treat doctors.
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EQuiP is open to both Individual and Organizational Memberships. EQuiP offers a platform to improve the knowledge base and to improve closer collaboration between GPs / Family Doctors, researchers, educators, policy makers and organisations involved in quality and safety in family medicine and primary care.
