Improving recruitment and retention of GPs and other doctors is vital to Scotland’s health in all localities, including rural areas. We provide a range of support to the GP workforce, including a rural-specific graduate entry medical degree, the Scottish graduate entry medicine programme—ScotGEM—golden hellos for harder-to-fill posts and bursaries for GP specialty training, which are all aimed at attracting GPs to work in rural Scotland.

The Scottish Government funds the national centre for remote and rural health and care, which focuses on recruitment and retention, education, training, research and evaluation, leadership and good practice. We will publish our remote and rural workforce recruitment strategy by the end of 2024.