Racing's medical staff playing their part in battle against coronavirus

Irish racing's doctors, working as GPs and emergency department consultants, are playing a key role in the battle against the coronavirus.

Jennifer Pugh, the sport's senior medical officer, said she and her Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board team were largely involved in diagnosing suspected cases of the disease.

She said: "Most of our team are GPs, so they are at the core of community work and diagnosing patients, referring people for tests. Also two of our team are emergency department consultants, and obviously they are right at the heart of it.

"I started at the Mater Hospital in Dublin last week in a GP clinic running alongside the emergency department which helps keep pressure off the emergency department, so any of our doctors that were not GPs or consultants would have been deployed in a similar way.

"The Order of Malta have been tremendous too, doing lots of community work, lots of patient transfers to keep pressure off the national ambulance services, even down to food and medicine deliveries to people in the community or people who are isolated."

Since retiring as Turf Club chief medical officer in late 2018, Dr Adrian McGoldrick has kept himself busy by returning to his GP practice in Newbridge, County Kildare, and like others in his profession finds himself engaged in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

He said: "What I and other GPs are doing is mostly triaging patients for testing and we're not really that much on the frontline. I think we have all had patients that have suffered from it, and in many cases we sadly have patients who have died. I have lost one and have another who is critically ill, but as GPs we are more on the periphery.

"I would spend a lot of time during the day assessing patients who think they might be symptomatic over the phone and I would be dealing with up to maybe 50 people on the phone and triaging in that way.

"Normally, I would be seeing 40 to 45 patients in a day but that has dwindled to maybe five or six.

"They have set up and are setting up Covid-19 hubs where GPs will triage patients with coronavirus symptoms, where I will send a patient instead of bringing him or her into surgery or sending straight to hospital. GPs volunteer to man these hubs but I cannot because I am over 60."

He added: "It is quite surreal really. We are three weeks into a lockdown situation and we are basically operating a surgery by telephone.

"That may well have implications for how we practice medicine in the future. For example it has forced GPs to use technologies that we might never have got around to, such as emailing prescriptions to pharmacies and even texting patients. I have probably seen more advances in that context in the last three weeks than in many years!"

On the prospects of racing starting up again, Pugh added: "Easing of government restrictions will be in tandem with medical advice and medical services being available again.

"The next three weeks are crucial and I would certainly be behind people staying at home and toughing it out for that time. I think we are doing well and we need to keep it at that.

"When the medical personnel are no longer needed in emergency departments and the Order of Malta are no longer needed by the national ambulance service, the possibility of racing going ahead will go hand-in-hand with that in my opinion."

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