IT is not quite mission impossible, but recruiting GPs has become notoriously difficult.
Earlier this year a survey of 463 practices by the British Medical Association Scotland found 17 per cent had at least one empty post. Finding junior doctors to train as GPs is also growing more difficult, with one- fifth of training jobs unfilled by national recruitment this summer, and the problem is exacerbated in rural practices, where aside from a growing caseload and increasing bureaucracy, there are associated problems with arduous on-call hours and travel times for home visits.
The initiative of the staff at Arran Medical Group is to be praised, therefore. They have posted on an online recruitment advertisement where they have remade the celebrated opening credits of the 1980s television hit, The A-Team, with staff members taking on the starring roles. We note that the GP registrar playing John "Hannibal" Smith - catchphrase "I love it when a plan comes together" - sensibly brandishes a pen rather than a cigar. This is the National Health Service, after all.
The tagline for the series famously contained the phrase "if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team". It is to be hoped the Arran recruiters can locate someone who suits them down to a Mr T.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article