Doctors would need a simple system to be able to notify licensing authorities when they had a patient with a condition that affected their ability to drive to make a mandatory process worthwhile.
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But the broader health system also needs to make treatments for sleep apnoea readily available so people can be supported to keep working.
That is the view of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, which believes health professionals would also need some discretion in assessing patients rather than a straight tick-a-box model.
The chair of the NSW-ACT faculty of the college, Dr Charlotte Hespe, said a mandatory notification system would risk overrunning the licensing authorities unless submissions were made when a condition was diagnosed.
"From my perspective, I certainly believe - and I'm speaking for all GPs - we are absolutely wanting to make sure that people understand the impact that their health might have on their ability to drive safely, rather than seeing driving as a right for everybody," Dr Hespe said.
Dr Hespe said any mandatory notification system must also educate people so they understood their responsibilities on the road and achieved a broader outcome: healthier commercial vehicle drivers.
"What we want is to make everybody understand their public health responsibilities," she said.
"My public health responsibilities as a GP are to make sure everybody I see understands the impact their illness might have on all the activities they might be doing, and the importance, then, of actually seeking treatment and complying with it, because of the potential consequences."
Dr Hespe said any scheme would need to carefully balance the impact it could have in preventing people coming forward for a conversation with their doctor, out of fear they could lose their job.
Drivers would need to feel empowered to come forward so they could receive readily available treatment to allow them to keep working, she said.
ACT Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker has recommended the ACT government mandate notifications when health professionals reasonably suspect their patients have a condition that could impair a driver.
The recommendation was made after an inquest into the death of four-year-old Blake Corney, who was killed in a crash on the Monaro Highway in 2018. A truck driver with suspected sleep apnoea crashed into the back of Blake's family car.
ACM, the publisher of this masthead has launched a campaign, Blake's Legacy, to advocate for more action on truck and road safety.
The chief executive of the Sleep Health Foundation, Dr Moira Junge, said more needed to be done to raise public awareness of the impact sleep conditions could have on driving.
Employers, employees and doctors all had a role to play in managing the impact of sleep conditions on the road and in workplaces more broadly, Dr Junge said.
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