A DOCTOR at Maple Healthcare in Lisnaskea has said the surgery, along with representatives from the Health and Social Care Board and the British Medical Association, will meet with local councillors to put into perspective the challenges facing the health centre as well as seeing if any positive changes can be made.

Patients at the Lisnaskea Health Centre have complained about waiting for long periods to speak to staff, the lack of available appointments and a range of other issues at Maple Healthcare.

A meeting was held on last Monday, June 14, with local councillors and members of the community to discuss the issue.

Dr. John Porteous, a GP at the practice, admits there are challenges but that the situation in Lisnaskea is not a unique one.

“We’re trying to get a sort of a more regional perspective on it because, you know, it’s easy for the people in Fermanagh to think that it’s some kind of local operation, but in fact, what the people in Fermanagh are experiencing is very similar to what’s going on all over the UK,” said Dr. Porteous.

“I think they kind of understand what the local difficulties are, but there’s been a massive expansion in demand because people have been sitting on problems for so long, and indeed, now that we are in a position to see patients again, everybody wants to be seen straight away and it’s just not possible, given that Covid is still here and is still causing trouble.

“We have to keep patients safe and we have to keep ourselves safe, so bit by bit we will get back towards some kind of normality – but we have a long way to go,” he added.

Dr. Porteous accepts that there are problems with the health centre in terms of accommodation and a lack of space, with the phone system that was installed recently going through some teething problems, but the practice is making adjustments to see how they can make it work better for everybody.

While Covid-19 has forced many changes to the way the health centre operates, there have been some who say that these problems pre-date the pandemic and look to the closure of other GP surgeries which resulted in the patient base being absorbed by the Lisnaskea practice.

Dr. Porteous says this is a fair analysis, adding that even before those surgeries closed, Maple Health were recruiting new doctors, but with the increased demand this was not enough.

Even at that, there is not enough space for doctors in the surgery: “If you go to the health centre, every single room, every single computer terminal has somebody on it. They are doing a day’s work and they’re going as hard as they can.

“We’re also still training medical students, we’re still training young doctors to come into general practice, so we are doing our best as a practice to address the recruitment issues that are national issues and regional issues.”

He has asked for the community to “cut us a bit of slack” and the proposed meeting will hopefully put across the work being done at the practice.

“We feel that it’s important that the national and regional context is brought into the discussion. We need to explode the myth that it is just Lisnaskea that is the worst practice in the world, because we definitely are not.

“We are doing our damndest to get this current crisis under some kind of control, and I just want to be fair to our staff and put it all in context,” added Dr. Porteous.