GP practices luring staff by offering ‘booze cruises’.

Novel recruitment drive for new doctors ‘highlights crisis in sector’

Health centres are trying to attract GPs with “booze cruise” socials and “fun-loving” workplaces amid staff shortages.

In a sign of the deepening recruitment crisis in general practice, managers have to come up with alternative ways of luring family doctors, says the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in Scotland.

The Tories blamed ministers for presiding over a staffing crisis that forces surgeries to throw in a “four-pack of Tennent’s” in their hunt for talent.

The Kennoway Medical Practice is hoping to entice doctors with the promise of a drinking trip along the Fife coast and other activities.

Its advert for a part-time GP post reads: “Recent social events have included a curry night, team-building afternoon in ‘Escape rooms’, annual BBQ and summer bus trip along the East Neuk of Fife – ‘booze cruise’.”

Another whimsical job advert at Dr Morris and Partners in Kirkcaldy is looking for “fun-loving GPs” who can get on with an experienced support staff who “like a laugh”.

Retired Dundee GP Alistair Montgomery said the adverts are a world away from the “po-faced adverts of yesteryear”.

“The truth is everyone is finding it hard to recruit and so has to find something distinctive to attract applicants,” he added. “It used to be the other way round.” There are more than 20 GP vacancies in Tayside and Fife advertised on the NHS Scotland recruitment website.

It emerged last week that more than a third of practices in Fife have declared their patient lists are full.

Dr Carey Lunan, chairman of the RCGP Scotland, said it is “well known that the GP workforce is in crisis”.

“Increasingly adverts for vacancies include not just the details of practice itself but what the team ethos and culture is like, and what might attract GPs to live and work in an area,” she added.

Miles Briggs, the Scottish Conservative’s health spokesman, said the adverts expose SNP mismanagement.

“If SNP ministers had properly invested in NHS workforce planning then the offer of a four-pack of Tennent’s wouldn’t be required to recruit the best and brightest to our GP surgeries,” he said.

“Without proper support these GP surgeries won’t be the last forced to use creative marketing to attract vital family doctors.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The new proposed GP contract, backed by investment of £110 million in 2018-19 and jointly developed with the British Medical Association, will ensure GPs can spend more time with patients and less time on bureaucracy, helping to cut doctors’ workload and make general practice an even more attractive career.

“Our ambition is to increase the number of GPs by at least 800 over 10 years to ensure a sustainable service that meets increasing demand.”

The truth is everyone is finding it hard to recruit and so has to find something distinctive to attract applicants. ALISTAIR MONTGOMERY RETIRED GP