p align=”justify”>Acknowledgements:
• Traditional custodians of the land on which we gather and pay my respects to their elders past and present
• The Hon. Peter Dutton Minister for Health and Sport,
• Senator Richard Di Natale and
• other parliamentary colleagues here tonight.
• Ladies and Gentlemen
,^^^,
Acknowledgements:
• Traditional custodians of the land on which we gather and pay my respects to their elders past and present
• The Hon. Peter Dutton Minister for Health and Sport,
• Senator Richard Di Natale and
• other parliamentary colleagues here tonight.
• Ladies and Gentlemen
Thank you Anne (Trimmer) for that introduction, and congratulations on your appointment as Secretary-General.
It really is a credit to the AMA that someone of such extraordinary experience has taken on this role.
And congratulations to Dr Brian Owler on your appointment. You’ve been thrown straight into the Budget negotiations with all sides, arguing strongly the case for doctors, patients and healthcare.
In addition to the Budget you’ve used the early days of your presidency to highlight a few key health issues, and I’d like to congratulate you for spending so much time, so early in your position, bringing a focus to Indigenous health issues.
While small improvements have been made in recent years, we still have a very long way to go to Close the Gap and overcome what remains an unacceptable blight on our nation’s record.
We can only overcome this with leadership from government, the health professionals and Indigenous organisations, and the AMA’s strong voice on this issue is crucial to overcoming Indigenous health disadvantage.
I’d also like to thank you for your strong, some might say ferocious, support for the Plain Packaging Laws, and your feisty response to the big tobacco attempts to peddle so-called secret internal research to undermine this assault on smoking.
I think the louder the screams from big tobacco, the clearer the evidence these laws are working.
Budget 2014-15
While I acknowledge the AMA draws its membership from a broad spectrum of medical practitioners, I want to tonight focus my comments particularly on general practice.
If there is any upside to the government’s pursuit of a GP Tax it is that it has focused attention on why we value general practice.
In particular its role at the heart of Medicare, acting as the frontline of preventative health care, catching illness and disease before far worse outcomes lead to greater costs for both patients and the health system.
General practice plays a critical role in facilitating some of the world’s best health outcomes, and central to this is the work of family doctors in a modern complex health system and broader society.
The work of General Practitioners was highlighted very powerfully in this place recently with the presentation of the Australian Doctors petition of over 2,500 general practitioners.
Rich in detail there are many stories worth reflecting on – but I was most powerfully struck by this one by a Sydney GP, writing about his patient, Frank:
My journey with Frank is now on its final leg. He is well into his 86th year, and the cancer that declared itself last year will inevitably end his life.
My role as Frank’s GP? He had an illness. I diagnosed and managed it. But of course, this account, while true, misses out so much.
It misses out what makes general practice special, the element that the politicians, the policy advisors and the opinion leaders often struggle to see and, therefore, truly value.
We first met more than 30 years ago. He was one of my first patients as a new rural GP — a pharmacist whose fitness and young family belied his 50 years. It turned out he was also a neighbour and between us, we had four young sons.
His robust health made him an easy patient, although one of his sons had a series of illnesses that resulted in an ongoing professional relationship with the entire family.
It wasn’t until my family returned to Sydney after a decade in the country that Frank’s health problems started to accumulate. [Simon goes on to details a series of health events a new GP was arranged]
Eventually, Frank and his wife retired to Sydney. Frank was once again my patient, but now the predictable manifestations of age were appearing.
We navigated further surgery, a pacemaker and a mysterious vasculitis that caused painful leg ulcers.
Then last year, Frank turned yellow. I tried to blame the antibiotics, but in my heart I knew the investigations would likely reveal a more sinister cause.
The past few months have seen an inexorable decline in Frank’s health, palliated by the care of an oncology team who have avoided aggressive attempts to add months of life at the cost of comfort.
What I have written so far accords with usual clinical practice. But it fails to recognise the complexity of the doctor-patient relationship and what I have gained from the relationship personally: the wisdom of a professional colleague, the support when I was facing difficult personal choices and the insight into what it means to age with equanimity.
In a few weeks, Frank and I will celebrate the wedding of ‘our’ daughter, which is likely to be one of our last shared experiences. Osler reminded us that "the good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease".
He could have added that the best physicians learn from their patients, and walk beside them through the uncertainties of life, partners on that journey. This is one of the many specialties of general practice lost on politicians.
It’s a very moving story of a 30 year journey together of GP and patient, but one that is far from unique.
That’s the lifelong journey at the heart of General Practice. It’s the journey that sees GPs often make great sacrifice to care for the vulnerable and the poor, travelling on that life journey with patients through generations of families, keeping them well, caring for their children, helping them as they age, and even caring for them as that journey comes to a close and the partnership is broken only in death.
That’s why I think it is so important that politicians of all persuasions develop a richer understanding of your work, what a day in the life of general practice is and how the policies enacted here can help or hinder that work.
That’s why I’ve made it a key part of my role to visit practices around the country, in Mt Druitt and Yagoona in Sydney, Beaudesert in the Gold Coast hinterland and a fabulous mobile GP service in Perth which looks after the homeless.
Conclusion
In May this year, Dr Brian Morton said of Family Doctor Week “GPs are providing high quality, affordable and easily accessible comprehensive health care … I am proud to be a GP, and I know we are making a difference to our patients each and every day of the year.”
Tonight is not the night for highly partisan political speeches but I wanted particularly in the current context – here in this place – in the heart of this Parliament – to say thank you and acknowledge our general practitioners.
Every day, in every suburb and town in thousands of practices across Australia GPs care for their communities with their ability and compassion, in the face of complex and challenging health problems and often increasingly tight margins.
Work had begun with you when Labor was in government to look at ways to strengthen general practice. My experience of the health sector is that there never any shortage of ideas around for improving the health system.
Brian, we’ve met a few times now since you took up the post, and I’d just like reiterate that my door is always open not just to receive ideas but to engage actively in developing good health policy on behalf of the millions of Australians who rely on your care. I look forward to continuing to work with you in the coming months and years.
Thank you.