Rural family doctors work longer hours and have more public patients than their urban colleagues, according to research published today.
And, in a significant finding in light of the Government's recently announced health strategy, rural family doctors participate more in a team approach to the delivery of patient care.
The national census of general practice in Ireland was carried out by researchers from the Departments of General Practice and Health Promotion at NUI Galway. Published in the international medical journal Family Practice, it achieved a high response rate from 2,093 family doctors in the Republic.
The study found that 33 per cent of rural practices had public health nurses, chiropodists and other publicly employed health professionals attached compared with 18 per cent of city practices. Seventy per cent of rural family doctors have weekly contact with the local public health nurse, while only 30 per cent of urban GPs do.
There was also a discrepancy in the quality of this professional contact, with a higher number of rural doctors rating it as excellent or good.
Both the quality and frequency of contact with publicly-funded physiotherapy services were significantly higher in rural areas. The only contact which rural and city GPs rated equally was that with private outpatient services.
In terms of medical services and equipment provided by family doctors, those working in rural areas were four times more likely to have oxygen available in their surgeries. There was also a fourfold difference in the availability of defibrillators, which are used in the emergency treatment of heart attacks.
However, well-women screening was more likely to be available in city practices.
One of the report's authors, Prof Andrew Murphy, said: "The recent primary-care strategy emphasised the importance of teamwork. The results of this study suggest that what levels of teamwork currently exist in Ireland do so largely in rural areas."
He added that existing team work in rural primary care should be considered as a model for delivering the team approach outlined by the Minister for Health in the document Primary Care - a New Direction.