A traditional Irish storyteller from South Armagh was drafted in as an after dinner entertainer on the Saturday night before the Northern Ireland LMCs conference last weekend.
Credit crunch trauma was briefly set aside as GPs settled in at the five-star Lough Erne golf resort, in Fermanagh, near Enniskillen.
The octogenarian storyteller poured forth tales of old-fashioned doctoring in rural farming communities, each of them as gloriously impenetrable as his accent.
He regaled delegates with stories of strange veterinary techniques involving horses and lengths of rubber pipe, and how you put back arms dislocated by a plough (lie patient on their back, put your foot on their chest, pull arm… there’s a different technique if it’s a woman, apparently).
But spirits could only be kept high for so long, as GPs wait for Gordon Brown to pull his finger out and read the Doctors and Dentists Review Body report that’s been clogging up his in-tray for the last three weeks or so.
GPC deputy chairman Dr Richard Vautrey was among the first to address the conference. He stepped far too close to the microphone and shouted a speech so loud that even delegates still cowering in their rooms recovering from the night before must have heard every word. Those who had made it downstairs, realised then if they’d downed a glass too many with dinner.
It was time to invest in general practice, Dr Vautrey said. GPs and other public sector workers shouldn’t have to pay for bankers’ blunders with another year of pay freezes.
Other delegates deplored, insisted, rejected, demanded, strongly suggested and condemned their way through motions exploring all manner of primary care conundrums.
Patients’ data was being stolen, salaried GPs exploited, directed enhanced services were delivered late and useless, pay was inadequate.
One bright point was the Future of General Practice in Northern Ireland document, a roadmap for keeping general practice in good health in the face of all these pressures.
With a bit of luck, even if Gordon ignores that report on his desk for a while longer, planning for the future like this means general practice won’t sink back into the old foot-on-shoulder routine for a while yet.
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