Outreach surgery proving successful

Despite ongoing difficulties recruiting a surgeon for Inverell, Hunter New England Health is pleased with the success of their outreach surgery services.

Since the resignation of Inverell GP/surgeon Dr Vivek Singh in 2005, Hunter New England Health has worked hard to recruit to the position, but when these efforts have been unsuccessful, the Health Service has been able to maintain a surgical service for Inverell through a number of different outreach models.

Director of Medical Services (North) Dr Peter Gillies said surgery has been well supported by Dr Jeff Myers from Armidale and Dr EK Wong from Glen Innes to minimise the disruption to surgery services.

"In the past couple of months, Dr Karunaratne from Armidale has taken over from Dr Myers, and Dr Edward Or has also commenced outreach services from Glen Innes along with Dr Wong," Dr Gillies said.

Dr Karunaratne and Dr Or each work an average of one day a week in Inverell, providing general low-risk surgery such as gastroscopy and colonoscopy, hernia repair and minor orthopaedic surgery, while Dr Wong continues to provide urology surgery, such as prostate surgery, one day per month.

Inverell also receives outreach surgical services from Dr Morgan (Ophthalmology) and Dr Reid (Gynaecology) and some gynaecology and obstetric surgery from local GP surgeon Dr Robert Palmer.

Dr Wong provides a consultation clinic once a month in Inverell and Dr Or is soon to commence consultation clinics from the hospital as well.

Dr Gillies said having consultation services, followed up with local surgery service, helps to provide local residents with a much-needed service.

He said one of the problems for many rural and regional specialist doctors is that there isn’t quite enough work to maintain a full work-load, nor is there the back-up of other similarly trained doctors to provide cover when they go on leave.

"In these aspects, the outreach model has a number of benefits for local communities," Dr Gillies said.

"Having doctors based in other communities where they have a hub of specialised doctors, means our doctors can benefit from professional networking and support, have less onerous on-call commitments and still have capacity to visit outlying communities.

"We are extremely grateful to these doctors for their willingness to share their skills with other facilities, especially Inverell," Dr Gillies said.