Jura casts web wide in search for island doctor

The Isle of Jura, in need of a GP, has a novel – and energetic – approach to recruitment.

Trusting little to the standard advertisements in the predictable journals, the island’s residents are taking to facebook and a thorough going media campaign to make sure that ‘the right doctor out there somewhere’ gets to know about the vacancy.

This is a concerted community effort.

Major businesses on the island have thrown their weight behind the campaign.

The Jura Hotel – you see it in front of you as you land from the Jura Passenger Ferry at the pontoons below the idyllic  island town of Craighouse – is offering discounted rates for any doctor wanting to come and mosey around the island to see if they fit each other’s needs.

The Jura Passenger Ferry itself – a fast cabined RIB out of Tayvallich on Loch Sween on an impossibly scenic route down the Sound of Jura into Craighouse – is also offering discounted fares for doctors on a recce.

And if you don’t live on Jura and you think this is nothing to do with you – you might be wrong.

If you can personally find the right doctor for Jura, there’s a finder’s fee to add to the combined gratitude of the 200 or so resourceful  islanders, who live outnumbered by red deer, in the shadows of the legendary three mountains, the Paps of Jura, with the fabulous raised beaches on the great bight of Loch Tarbert on its west coast and the growl of one of the worlds largest whirlpools, the fearsome Corryvreckan, competing with the sweep of wings of white tailed sea eagles on its northern shores.

The Isle of Jura Distillery will present a special bottle of malt to the finder of the perfect doctor for what they are reasonably calling ‘the perfect practice’.

There’s a house with a view that comes with the job. This has  to be the idyllic family posting.