As far as the general public is concerned, much of the work of the Scottish Rural Medicine Collaborative has been under the radar.

All that changed on 24th October, however, with a flurry of media activity centred on the collaborative’s involvement in the ground-breaking Rediscover the Joy of General Practice initiative.

The collaborative issued a press release on The Joy to coincide with the annual conference of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the result was widespread print, broadcast and online coverage. It also led to a big hike in interest in the collaborative’s website, and in the number of people who follow the SRMC’s Twitter account.

One of the newspapers that was particularly keen to report on The Joy was The Herald, whose health correspondent, Helen McArdle, covered the story thus. A similar article was featured in the Press and Journal under reporter Calum Ross’s by-line. It’s anticipated that some local weekly newspapers may well have articles on The Joy on their online platforms.

One of the people most heavily involved in The Joy is Orkney GP Charlie Siderfin, a member of the SRMC board, and so The Orcadian newspaper gave over its entire front page to an article on the initiative, along with a large picture of Charlie.

The BBC was particularly interested in The Joy story, and the online version of its coverage will have attracted a significant readership. There was also widespread BBC radio coverage of The Joy, with the corporation’s local stations in Highland, Orkney and Shropshire all running the story, with interviews from SRMC office-bearers, and the BBC has indicated that it may well consider running a televised feature on The Joy.

Meanwhile, in the week from 17th to 24th October the section on The Joy in the SRMC’s website had no fewer than 707 page views, more than 17 per cent up on the previous week.

Martine Scott, the SRMC’s Programme Manager, said: “There is no shortage of negativity in media coverage of health issues, so it’s been great to read of a good-news story for a change – and even better to read of one in which we are so heavily involved.”