Original Research
‘Get away from it all’ or ‘Too good to be true?’: a qualitative exploration of job adverts for remote and rural posts
AUTHORS
Zoë Christina Skea1 PhD, Advanced Research Fellow * 
Louise Locock1 PhD, Professor
Benjamin Tse2 Resident Doctor
Andrew S Maclaren3 PhD
Lorraine Angell4 Public Research Partner
Jennifer Cleland5 PhD, Professor
Topher Dawson6 Public Research Partner
Alan Denison7 Professor and Dean of Postgraduate Medicine
Christina Dobson8 PhD, Senior Research Associate
Rosemary Hollick9 PhD, Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant Rheumatologist
Peter Murchie10 PhD, Professor
Diane Skåtun11 PhD, Senior Research Fellow
Verity Watson11 PhD, Professor
AFFILIATIONS
1 Aberdeen Centre for Evaluation, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, Scotland, UK
2 NHS Grampian, Foresterhill, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
3 Health Services Research Unit, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
4 Public Research Partner, Yorkshire, UK
5 Medical Education Research & Scholarship Unit, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
6 Public Research Partner, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, UK
7 NHS Education Scotland, Foresterhill, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
8 Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
9 Epidemiology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
10 Academic Primary Care, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
11 Health Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
ACCEPTED: 15 July 2025
Early Abstract:
Introduction: Recruitment and retention of the healthcare workforce is crucial to maintaining access to services, but these are ongoing challenges for health services both in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and globally. As part of a wider study of community-led initiatives to attract healthcare staff to remote and rural areas, we examined how NHS job adverts represent the community to which they are recruiting, drawing on the concept of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), to focus on which community assets are given prominence and how.
Methods: 270 job adverts for posts in remote and rural areas of the UK were collected between July and December 2022, from a monthly search of three sources. Informed by the ABCD lens, job adverts were thematically analysed to identify the different assets that adverts highlighted; use (or not) of visual media; how advertisers ordered information about the job versus the community as a place to live. We then contacted named recruitment contacts from all the adverts collected where possible, to ask how many applications were received and whether an appointment was made.
Results: Adverts ranged from a couple of short paragraphs of text describing the post, with limited details about the location, to lengthy and elaborate descriptions of both the post and the local community, sometimes with photographs, links to further information and videos. Many of the adverts in our sample placed early emphasis on ‘why here’ (i.e. the place) rather than ‘why this job’. E-mails were sent to 189 advertisers, and we received 45 responses. Only 18 respondents stated that an appointment had been made as a direct result of the advert.
Discussion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine using a theoretical lens how NHS job adverts represent the community to which they are recruiting. While many adverts included plenty of detailed information about the community and the lifestyle, other places may not be realising the full potential of local assets, or featuring as much visual information as they could Feedback from advertisers has also suggested that those recruiting to rural and remote posts may need to proactively seek connections with potential applicants rather than hoping that the advert alone will be enough to find them. Our findings are likely to be transferable to other countries and healthcare systems with problems recruiting to remote and rural areas.
Conclusions: The aim of advertising is both to inform and persuade. Our findings suggest that local place-based assets are not always featured as strongly or as visually as they could be in adverts for remote and rural healthcare jobs. However, over-emphasis on the ‘rural idyll’ could have unintended consequences, encouraging people to apply without fully realising what life will be like.
Our analysis of advertiser responses cannot demonstrate conclusively how far the advert was a decisive factor in recruiting or not. However, the number of responses reporting that no-one had been recruited or even applied raises concerns about the amount of NHS investment in advertising.