Warning that NI's record-high waiting lists to get even worse
By Health Correspondent TARA MCLAUGHLIN
A senior doctor here is warning waiting lists are set to lengthen as a consequence of the pandemic.
Dr Laurence Dorman, Chair of the Royal College of GPs in Northern Ireland spoke to Downtown Cool FM as part of a special series of interviews examining the wider impact of the Covid crisis here.
We have been looking at how the pandemic is impacting other sectors as services are diverted to cope with the rise in demand.
Dr Dorman said he fears the situation will not improve:
"We didn't go into this pandemic in a good place, we already had very long waiting lists and those have just got worse."
Covid-19 struck just as Northern Ireland's health service was undergoing a 10-year transformation plan.
It was hoped elective care centres would reshape routine surgery as part of the solution to try and tackle huge waiting lists.
But with hospitals becoming overwhelmed many patients saw their operations cancelled or postponed this year.
Dr Dorman said that has a ripple effect on General Practice: "We're seeing big pressures in our secondary care services but what we see is that there's a big impact on General Practice when elective care things are postponed or cancelled.
"So for example some of my patients are waiting on hip operations, cancer operations or investigations and whenever those are delayed or cancelled, it puts big pressure on GP services.
"The way that impacts us is that patients then turn to us whenever they've got pain and so we have to take time to help deal with that.
"Quite frequently it feels very isolating we feel like we're dealing with that on our own, we don't have the same back up we would have normally had from our hospitals because they don't have the theatre capacity or the elective care that they used to have."
Dr Dorman also expressed concerns that some health conditions may be missed as doctors grapple with remote working.
Surgeries operate a telephone triage service first, as part of infection control measures.
While doctors can decide to call a patient down to the surgery, Dr Dorman said some telltale signs can be missed over the phone:
"There are certain what we call subtle hidden cues that we are missing.
"So patients with for example mental health issues, being remote and distant can be difficult to connect with people if somebody has depression or if they've come in with a hidden presentation so somebody who is maybe depressed but has come in with something else and we're trying to illicit what's the true reason for the consultation.
"Other things such as if somebody's maybe been drinking heavily and have the smell of alcohol on their breath or their clothes are disheveled, those are wee subtle cues that we do miss if we don't see people face-to-face.
"We are worried about that."