Pioneering GP recruitment project brings The Joy to rural communities

A ground-breaking initiative — the brainchild of an Orkney-based doctor — is playing a key role in the fight to address GP recruitment and retention in some of Scotland’s most isolated communities.

Dr Charlie Siderfin’s pioneering project sees a large rural support team of GPs recruited to work for short periods in areas covered by Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and NHS Highland.

The initiative called Rediscover the Joy of General Practice — The Joy for short — is proving so successful that it could now be expanded to other parts of the country.

Since the turn of the year, 27 doctors have been recruited to work for 12 to 18 weeks a year in practices that have found it difficult to attract GPs.

Dr Siderfin, who has been a GP in Orkney since 2000, is a medical advisor to the Scottish Government.

Since October, 2018, he has been tasked with finding solutions to difficulties in remote and rural areas and developing collaborative working between rural health boards.

He played a key role in the formation of NHS Orkney’s highly successful Isles Network of Care (INoC) in 2010, shedding the use of expensive locums and linking outer isles surgeries.

Although The Joy is still in its infancy, Dr Siderfin’s idea is being hailed as a project which could have a lasting legacy.

Dr Siderfin, Orkney’s lead GP, said: “We advertised for GPs through the British Medical Journal and the response was excellent, I think in part because GPs see this as a collaborative and systematic effort to address recruitment and retention issues, rather than a sticking-plaster approach.”

Martine Scott, programme manager at the Scottish Rural Medicine Collaborative (SRMC) which governs the project, said: “Through The Joy, we now have a highly-motivated team of very experienced GPs, who are helping boards and practices to fill gaps that would have been hard to fill.

“The Joy is working well in the four board areas it covers and we are in talks about how the scheme might be applied elsewhere in Scotland.”