GENERAL PRACTITIONERS and public health nurses communicate poorly with one another, with one in five saying they have never had face-to-face contact, new research has found.
With both the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE) backing a multidisciplinary approach to primary care, the results of the survey suggest even basic methods of communication are not being utilised.
Meath GPs Dr Mary Pat Murphy and Dr Joe Clarke sent questionnaires to 152 family doctors and 96 public health nurses practising in the northeast to assess levels of professional co-operation.
Some 29 per cent of GPs said they did not know the nurses in their area by name. Just over half of GPs had no mobile phone number for public health nurses with whom they practised.
The research, published in the current issue of Forum - The Journal of the Irish College of General Practitioners, found that 77 per cent of nurses did not have a mobile phone number for GPs in their area. Some eight in 10 nurses said they did not know the e-mail address of local family doctors.
Although 45 per cent of doctors and nurses were in weekly telephone contact, one in 25 respondents said they were in touch less than once a year.
Last year the HSE announced the development of more than 40 primary care teams in the northeast. But, the authors note, "this study demonstrates a present lack of effective communication between GPs and public health nurses, who would historically be regarded as forming the core of the primary care team".
"The level of disconnectedness suggested by the absence of functional e-mail and mobile phone use is disconcerting. Given the highly fragmented level of professional interaction suggested by this study, the implications for the deployment of primary care teams . . . must be interpreted accordingly," they concluded.