What do general practitioners consider support? Findings from a local pilot initiative

This paper reports the findings of a local pilot that was aimed to assess if making a local psychiatrist available would improve GP satisfaction with regard to responsiveness and access to specialist mental health services. A psychiatrist was made available via a telephone advice line for 1 h every day. Pre- and post-survey of all GPs was conducted to elicit GP satisfaction and suggestions. The pilot was conducted from Maitland, the base of Hunter Valley Mental Health Service. A total of 202 GPs in the area were contacted and surveyed; 17% responded to the pre-survey and 27% to the post-survey. Only 8% of the GPs used the telephone advice service. Despite low use, most responding GPs indicated that they would like to see the services continue. Most of the responding GPs (both users and non-users of this service) were not aware of or had not used the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ GP Psych Support initiative. Results from this pilot indicate that making a local psychiatrist available improves GP satisfaction with regard to responsiveness and access, despite low use. Further research is needed to establish if such a service can be made available at an area level and whether this would be cost effective.