Recruiting GPs

Staff Retention and Recruitment

As everyone knows, being unable to retain or recruit staff - especially GPs and nurses - is a major challenge for the NHS.  The job has become much more stressful, with burnout cited as being a major problem, and doctors are cutting back their hours or leaving the profession all together.   
The Lochgilphead Medical Practice recently referred to problems in recruiting GPs as a major reason for their decision to hand back the Furnace and Inveraray Medical Practice contract.

 

The practices in the Three Lochs Medical strategic alliance aim to make our practices somewhere that doctors, nurses, and other staff really want to work, and where they are less likely to burn out.  This approach recently helped the Strachur Medical Practice recruit a new Practice Nurse to replace our practice nurse who was retiring.  Strachur Medical Practice has also successfully recruited new office staff that were needed during the past year.

Whilst we can't solve the national shortage of GPs, we can try to make sure that available GPs really want to be part of our teams and work in our practices.  We do that in a combination of ways: 

• thinking about the reasons GPs leave the profession, 
• building practices that are high on empathy (for the staff, for each other, and for the patients). where people feel safe and valued
• from listening to our staff (for example, when it comes to being flexible in relation to working hours and child care need)s.  

Building our relationships with our patients is also central to this: as it's just much more rewarding to be a GP when you are interacting with patients who feel included, and listened to, and therefore have a positive relationship with the practice.  

 

Our management team has spent over a decade working with patients and staff to build these features into Strachur Medical Practice.  Getting these things right helps to reduce the risk of doctors burning out, cutting back on their hours of work, or leaving the profession all together.

 

Whilst no-one is immune to the pressures in the current environment, we already have doctors who want to work in Furnace and Inveraray and, we are confident that we can staff the Strachur Medical Practice and the Furnace & Inveraray Medical Practice.

Are you a GP or RN that would like to work as part of one of our teams? If so, then we would love to hear from you.  Get in touch using the contact form on this page or call Strachur Medical Practice and ask for Anne our Practice Manager, or just visit us during opening hours.  We'll handle your enquiry in the strictest confidence.