A modern way of working and an easy commute

“It’s been a brilliant move,” says Eilidh Cameron of her decision to relocate from the Scottish mainland to further her career as a doctor – and start a family – in Shetland.

Having grown up in the Scottish Borders town of Biggar, Eilidh always intended to be a rural GP. When her partner found work in the islands four years ago she jumped at the change to follow suit.

Even during the Covid-19 pandemic she enjoyed “lots of opportunities I probably wouldn’t have had elsewhere”, initially as one of two GPs at Brae in the North Mainland and now as part of a bigger team at Lerwick Health Centre, her place of work since summer 2020.

Most of the GPs at her practice live within their own catchment area and know some of their patients socially. Eilidh had been “really worried” about that prospect, but in reality finds it “really nice to be seen as a human as well as a doctor”.

While health workers in Shetland are certainly kept busy, she values the fact that “a default appointment here is 15 minutes, whereas down the road it would be 10 minutes”.

“It means patients can come with two or three different things and you don’t have to stop them, and there can be a little bit of wider conversation,” Eilidh explains.

“We can understand our patients better, and if they’re consulting again a few times you remember who they are and are also aware of what’s important to them – and that does influence what you do next.”

Prior to moving to Shetland a varied medical career had seen her take in a range of postings within Fife and the Scottish central belt, followed by a year in the Australian capital Canberra. She travelled down under with a host of other UK graduates after completing her medical studies at the University of Edinburgh in 2011.

Before going into a specialism Eilidh spent a year working at St Andrews University as an anatomy demonstrator. The experience was “really cool”, helping consolidate what she’d learned during her studies and arming her with “a lot of new knowledge that I mightn’t have had from uni”.

She then undertook four years of GP training, mostly in Glasgow and Lanarkshire followed by a stint at a GP surgery in Kirkintilloch, a “pretty affluent” town just north of Glasgow.

Influenced by her upbringing outwith the city, being a rural GP had always appealed and the decision to come to Shetland felt like an obvious one after her partner’s career brought him to the islands.

The Brae role saw her being handed a significant amount of responsibility as a brand new GP, while she relished the “nice and easy geography” that meant her half-hour journey to work was among “the longest commutes anybody would be doing”.

Eilidh and her partner initially rented and then bought their home – just a few miles south of Lerwick and an even shorter commute away from her current workplace.

She praises the “very modern way of working” at Lerwick Health Centre. All the requisite teams are “really accessible” with physios, district nurses and psychiatrists all located within the building, and GPs working hand-in-glove with advanced nurse practitioners (ANPs).

“It’s brilliant, it breeds really good innovation in a team, and the patient care is excellent,” she says.

“You can see the right person really quickly and easily. We’ve also got the online consulting [via AskMyGP] which is great for patients. Things are speedier for them, mainly because they have to provide the information for us to triage properly.”

Handling straightforward queries online has become a vital cog in making the best use of medical professionals’ valuable time, and she emphasises doctors will always see patients in person when it makes sense.

“It’s not about keeping people out of the door,” Eilidh stresses. “Some people don’t want to take time out of work [to attend an appointment] and a lot of consultations are done just by email back and forth. That’s usually the patient’s preference; otherwise it can be a phone call and then bring them in after that if need be.

“We are seeing people face-to-face every day, and plenty of them, and we’re able to work out just what the patient needs and wants.”

Eilidh acknowledges “pros and cons” between traditional partnered practices and the health board practice environment she now works within. She is relishing being able to “focus on the patient care” while others look after the business and administrative aspects of the job.

“I’ve done a lot of leadership work in my first year or two of practice, and the whole island team’s integration is great,” she continues. “Even working in one of the smaller practices, you felt part of a bigger team.”

Her colleagues in Lerwick are “great” and an “interesting kind of split” between “folk who have been here 20 years or more, a big cohort of GPs within their first five years of qualifying, and then a big group of ANPs, a lot of whom are trainees”.

Outside of work, Eilidh and her partner’s 18-month-old daughter Vaila is very much the focal point. She waxes lyrical about the superb range of facilities and classes available for anyone with young children.

“We live in the middle of a big sheep farm, and there are tractors that go past every day and boats in the sea, and she is delighted by all of these things.

“We can just pop out for some fresh air and let her run riot, really. But at the same time we are five minutes from the town [Lerwick] and the amenities are crazy here, all the swimming pools… we find everything really accessible.

“I’ve never had to have a long drive with her in the car, and I’m really aware of that when I go down the road [to the Scottish mainland] and visit friends who stay nearby my parents’. She’s 45 minutes in the car and falling asleep and getting grumpy.”

While she was on maternity leave between summer 2021 and summer 2022, Eilidh found to her delight that there were toddler groups every single weekday that they could attend without ever having to travel more than 15 minutes from home.

“It’s incredible,” Eilidh says. “The baby swimming lessons, baby gym classes… the library is another great place, they have ‘bookbugs’ that we went to twice a week during maternity leave. For mums who want to be out and about every day there’s definitely loads of stuff on.”