Sandra Kuehn, the practice manager at the centre, says the health service is having trouble keeping up with all its patients since it only has one full-time doctor, Dr Michael Clarke, and the town’s other doctor from the neighbouring St. George Family Practice, Dr Michael Nasheed, is on leave for up to two months.

“There’s only so many people you can book in on one day. Medicare doesn’t like to overload and one of the doctors has to go on duty at the hospital overnight so we don’t want to burn them out,” she said.

Meanwhile Dr Jolmer and Dr Christel Smit from the Collarenebri Medical Centre have also left the area in the last couple of weeks.

Dr Christel Smit also worked at the Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service (WAMS) three days a week.

WAMS currently has two full-time doctors however The Ridge News was told that one of them will be leaving at the end of this month while the other will leave at the end of August.

“So there is a shortage everywhere,” said Sharon Girling, the practice manager at the Collarenebri Medical Centre.

Like Ms Kuehn, Ms Girling said they were currently trying to attract another full-time doctor. Although Ms Girling was hopeful they would get another doctor in the near future Ms Kuehn wasn’t holding her breath.

“It took us a year to get Obi and another two years after that to get a second full-time doctor,” said Ms Kuehn.

“It is very hard to get doctors to stay in rural and remote areas.”

The General Manager of OCHRE Health Group, which manages the Ridge Medical Centre as well as the Collarenebri Medical Centre, Peter Tognetti said this was related to the fact that there is an overall shortage of GPs in Australia at the moment.

Mr Tognetti said the recruitment arm of OCHRE Health had been actively advertising the position in Lightning Ridge for the last two months. He said they hoped to fill the position within the next four months or by the end of 2010 at the latest.

“It is our priority to fill the position as soon as possible to relieve some of the pressure on Dr Clarke and to provide continuity to the community,” Mr Tognetti concluded.