NHS Highland looks to recruit professional staff from Holland
Doctors in the Netherlands are being targeted in a recruitment campaign by NHS Highland.
Inverness now has a regular direct flight link to Schiphol airport, Amsterdam, and NHS Highland believes doctors in Holland may be interested in pursuing a career in what is one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom.
Elaine Mead, chief executive of NHS Highland, said: “Ours is a beautiful area where the quality and pace of life are exactly what many professional people are looking for.
“We already have a multi-cultural workforce and actively seek to recruit people from outside the UK. The fact that there are now regular flights between Amsterdam and Inverness might help to persuade doctors and other professionals in Holland to consider working with us.”
With a population of around 72,000, Inverness is one of the UK’s fastest-growing cities. Its modern district general hospital has around 500 beds and serves a very wide geographical area. NHS Highland’s area covers 42 per cent of Scotland’s land mass, and has a population of 320,000. As well as the main district general hospital in Inverness, there are 23 other hospitals in the authority’s area.
NHS Highland is expanding its workforce and is recruiting to the following specialties: oncology, radiology, rheumatology, anaesthetics, neurology, ophthalmology, urology, paediatrics, psychiatry, general surgeons and physicians, oral & maxillofacial surgery, trauma & orthopaedics, and obstetrics & gynaecology.
NHS Highland consultant paediatrician Dr Philine van der Heide moved from the Netherlands to Inverness 10 years ago, and says she’s sure some of her compatriots in the medical profession would be interested in following her path.
“There is a quality of life here that you simply would not get in the Netherlands,” the mother-of-two said. “You don’t really get a rat race here. Also, I love the outdoors and living in a beautiful rural area. I think Scotland is one of the most beautiful places I have been to, and it is very diverse.””
Dr van der Heide, who is from Apeldoorn, worked in a hospital in Amsterdam before moving to Scotland. She had holidayed with her family in the Scottish Highlands in the 1980s and moved to the area to work with a voluntary organisation in Inverness before taking her present job in Raigmore Hospital.
She said easily accessible childcare facilities and flexibility in her working arrangements were two significant factors in her working in Inverness.
NHS Highland is advertising its doctor vacancies in a major Dutch newspaper and also behind a major recruitment campaign for GPs to work in some of its more remote and rural communities.
The recruitment campaign features a dedicated website, http://nhshighland-rural.scot.nhs.uk/why-rural/, which details GP vacancies and explains some of the many benefits of practising in the Highlands’ remote and rural communities.
Elaine Mead said: “We are confident that there must be many GPs, either newly qualified or experienced, who would relish the lifestyle and career opportunities working in some of our more remote areas would provide.
“There are also very real positives to practising in such an area. The workload is enormously varied, it’s possible to spend more time with patients, and doctors can truly make a difference, working with communities, colleagues and others helping to shape services.”
NHS Highland is being supported in its work by the Scottish Government through the ‘Being Here’ programme, with £1.5 million having been granted to the health board to devise and test innovative ways of recruiting healthcare professionals, and particularly GPs, in remote and rural areas.
