Our next candidates – thinking ahead…
Around 3000 people mustered in Liverpool from 24th-26th October for the Royal College of General Practitioners’ annual primary care conference and exhibition – and that made the event a perfect showcase for the Scottish Rural Medicine Collaborative (SRMC).
Now, the SRMC is following up on the considerable interest shown by delegates in the collaborative’s key message: that rural Scotland is a great place in which to do general practice.
The SMRC mounted a stand alongside the ‘Scotland is Now’ stand and had conversations with 245 delegates, of which 42 will be followed up.
“That’s 42 people from outside Scotland who otherwise would never have had the opportunity to find out more about what we have to offer,” said SRMC project manager Ian Blair, one of the 16 people who worked from the two Scottish stands. “Most of these people are at the early stages of their careers, and they came from far and wide: from the Netherlands, Malta, Qatar, Australia and, of course, the UK.”
One feature of the event was the presence of what Ian called a “specialist in hand-holding people from abroad” – someone who can guide potential candidates through the recruitment process in Scotland. There was also someone promoting out-of-hours general practice work in Scotland, as well as someone who talked about GP fellowships.
“Our job now is to contact some of those we spoke to and signpost them to where they need to go if they want to follow up their interest in rural general practice,” said Ian.