Our Donation to Rural Doctors Foundation

In January, we concluded Giving cycle 5 with a vote by our giver community, leading to a $15,000 donation to the Rural Doctors’ Foundation to support their flagship program, ‘GPs4Rural Docs’.

GPs 4 Rural Docs provides experienced general practitioners to rural and remote regions to care for the physical, mental and overall health of doctors and health workers in the bush. So far, 105 health practitioners have accessed the program, with Treating servicing GPs having travelled a total of 51,654km to get there! 

What issue does GPs4RuralDocs solve?

Looking after your own health isn’t as easy for our rural doctors as their city-based colleagues. The very same factors that affect access for our rural patients also affects rural doctors and healthcare providers.

In the words of one rural GP - “A healthy doctor can continue to treat patients safely. It’s vital that we care for ourselves before caring for others.”

Our community understands the  importance of routine GP care - and for many rural and remote doctors, seeing a GP can mean travelling hundreds of kilometres and taking significant time off from their community, making it hard to see a GP for themselves! With three in four rural GPs having experienced burnout within the last 12 months, these barriers to care can be the difference between good and poor health. 

This is important, because the effects of poor healthcare access for rural doctors has a flow-on effect to rural communities. 17% of rural health practitioners cite lack of healthcare access as a reason affecting their ability to continue practicing, and just one week of time taken to travel out of town for an appointment can result in a reduction in at least 150 patients seen back home. 

Rural docs know this, and often delay care (or seek care from their colleagues, or assess and treat themselves) in order to reduce the burden on their community and already stretched workforce. 

In the words of GP4RuralDocs Participants: 

“I was able to discuss issues that I have had for a long time.”

“It has allowed me to set aside time to consider and prioritise my health as the GP visits once every few months and so taking the time to think about what I may need from a GP is good. Otherwise I would push these issues aside and leave them for much longer.”

image courtesy Rural Doctors Foundation

What our donation has supported

Since receiving the funding from One for Health, Rural Doctors Foundation has delivered clinics for healthcare workers in Stanthorpe, Goondiwindi, St George, Charleville, Roma, Blackall and Barcaldine;  They are soon to expand the clinics to Mt Isa, Cloncurry and Julia Creek. 

Since February, the $15,000 donated to Rural Doctors Foundation has directly funded after hours consultations in these locations. Feedback from patients had indicated that work pressures sometimes made it difficult to attend the visiting GP visits during working hours, and needed an option for after hour consultations. The program was able to meet this need with the additional funding provided by One for Health! Our donation will continue to support more out of hours appointments for future clinics, expanding the health practitioners supported by 20%.

We hope that it is encouraging to know that our dollar has gone directly towards supporting our rural doctors, and by extension our rural communities, thanks to the Rural Doctors Foundation. 

Find more about the Rural Doctors Foundation and the great work they do here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flwE0BzCYT4