Cash tonic cures doctors' itchy feet

It wasn't going to take the world to make GPs Jethro Le Roy and Evelyn Gerrish stay in the Western Bay - just a little incentive was enough.
The pair are the first recipients of two new scholarships given out by the Western Bay Public Health Organisation (PHO) as part of an effort to retain doctors and nurses in the area.
Each will receive $30,000 over the next three years to help supplement their incomes. In return, they must stay and work in the Western Bay for the next three years in order to receive the funding.
Mrs Gerrish, 30, who works at Fifth Ave Family Practice, said she was delighted to learn she had been awarded the scholarship. She said providing doctors with incentives was a step in the right direction towards keeping more doctors in the Western Bay.
"In today's climate it is very important because there is such a shortage of doctors. This is one way to keep them in the area," she said.
"I know seven or eight practices where a doctor could get work at the drop of a hat."
Mrs Gerrish, who studied medicine in Otago, said she and her husband were going to seek work overseas until she found out she was pregnant with her now 3-year-old daughter, Paige.
"The extra money from the scholarship means we won't be moving out of the area," she said.
Mr Le Roy, who grew up in Te Puke, said he knew about 10 doctors who had left New Zealand to work for more money overseas.
The 37-year-old said the money from the scholarship would allow him to stay in the Western Bay and help some of the people who needed it most in the region.
As a result of the scholarship, he will be working with Ngati Kahu Hauora - a home-based Maori healthcare service with a large percentage of high-needs patients.
"It will be the first time they will have had a fulltime doctor so hopefully with my Maori background it will help," he said.
The work will give him the chance to establish long-term relationships with patients, which he says will lead to better overall service. Those relationships have become increasingly difficult to establish with the shortage of GPs around the country.
"One doctor once told me: 'You're not a real GP until you've given birth control to a baby you delivered," he laughed.
Roger Taylor, general manager for the PHO, said if the first round of scholarships was successful then it would look at continuing the program in the future. It will be offering two more scholarships to local nurses in the New Year.
He was delighted with both recipients of the scholarship and hoped the initiative was a step towards solving GP shortages.