By air, land and sea – locum doctor’s four-day trip for 3½-hour island shift

A HEALTH board hired a locum doctor to make a four-day journey – by air, land and sea – to cover a morning shift on a remote island.

NHS Highland tasked Dr Jan Brooks, from Colonsay, often classed as Britain’s most remote island, to provide cover on equally inaccessible Jura.

Dr Brooks set off on her journey to Jura – which writer George Orwell dubbed “a very ungettable place” – on Saturday 4 February. Transport timetables for planes and ferries meant she had to leave then to ensure she was on Jura to fill a three-and-a-half-hour gap in locum cover, from 8am to 11:30am the following Monday.

And it was impossible for her to get back to Colonsay until the next day, meaning it took four days to enable her to cover the shift. Although there are airports on Islay and Colonsay, there are only flights connecting the two on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was no good for the period in question.

The winter Caledonian MacBrayne timetable has no scheduled ferry sailings between Islay and Colonsay in February.

However, questions are now being asked over the way NHS Highland is using taxpayers’ money.

Robin Currie, from Islay, the spokesman on island issues for Argyll and Bute Council, said: “Islay is only a five-minute ferry ride away from Jura, and it has a number of doctors, so why on earth you would take someone from an island like Colonsay, I don’t know.

“Colonsay, although geographically close to Jura, is probably the furthest away place in Scotland in terms of the time it would take to get a doctor there. You could get a doctor from London quicker.”

Dr Peter Grant, 59, said he informed NHS Highland before the start of his two-week locum cover on Jura that he had to leave early on 6 February, creating a short gap before the next regular locum was due to start.

Dr Grant, of Grantown-on-Spey, said: “NHS Highland was aware that there was going to be a three-and-a-half hour gap before Dr Ceri Le Mar took over.

“It is my understanding that it was going to be a local arrangement, but I think the arrangement broke down on the Friday before my departure.”

Dr Grant, provost of the North of Scotland Faculty of the College of General Practitioners, said: “I can’t pull a solution out of a hat, but I think this situation highlights that large amounts of money is being paid for cover that is not very cost-effective or helpful.”

Argyll SNP MSP Mike Russell said: “This seems totally daft. NHS Highland need to get their act together to ensure there are doctors for all the rural practices – and robbing Peter to pay Paul is not the way to do it.”

An NHS Highland spokesman said: “We were aware that there was a gap in the service on the day in question and we had arranged well in advance for another GP to cover that gap. However, this GP was at very short notice unable to provide that cover.

“Our priority was our patients on Jura and our staff pulled out all the stops to find a GP at short notice.”