Grand designs: Rural GP house makeover aims to entice staff

"With the workforce crisis I’m having to be really creative about how I’m attracting staff"

Waimate specialist GP Sarah Creegan’s latest recruitment drive includes plumping pillows and perusing paint swatches to help entice new staff to her rural South Canterbury practice.

“Workforce is the single most huge challenge for us,” says Dr Creegan, owner of Waimate Medical Centre. “I think that’s made much harder by our rurality.”

She says key to rural recruiting is accommodation. With rental properties limited in the historic town, she decided to buy, renovate and decorate a local house to create a chic and comfortable “home away from home” for potential staff members.

“With the workforce crisis I’m having to be really creative about how I’m attracting staff.”

To date the house has been used by a locum and at weekends by out-of-town nurses providing after hours and Primary Response in Medical Emergencies (PRIME) services to the district located halfway between Timaru and Oamaru.

But, after having to close her books to new patients six months ago because of understaffing, Dr Creegan hopes the lure of quality accommodation will also help attract a GP or nurse practitioner to work two to three days a week in the town.

For rural practices, already struggling to attract both short and long-term staff, providing accommodation is an additional challenge and expense, Dr Creegan says.

“It’s actually a necessity for rural practices to do exactly what I’ve done,” she says.

“It’s just that I’ve probably thrown a lot more effort, money and creativity to this particular project.” She has been lucky that house prices in Waimate are “considerably” lower than the national average.

She had Timaru interior decorator Deborah Still to help her unleash her creativity, and says the pair have been “reasonably frugal” with the fun project.

“We spent a day shopping at the 50 per cent off Farmers sale in Timaru and we trailed around the second-hand shops in Oamaru.” She also became a TradeMe expert trader, including buying royal memorabilia as, although not a royalist herself, she couldn’t resist a queenly theme for the house built in Waimate’s Queen St around the time of the 1953 coronation.

A 1950s chaise longue that had been relegated to storage in the woolshed was also dusted off and upcycled with the help of an expert upholsterer who had recently moved into the district.

Dr Creegan, who took on Waimate Medical Centre in 2007, first got to know Ms Still while doing the fitout and décor of the practice’s purpose-built centre that opened in late 2018.

One of the beauties of living in a small town, says Dr Creegan, was knowing all the tradies – and they quickly jumped on board with the project to support the local doctor and medical centre.

“They’ve been delighted and all keeping their fingers crossed for me that it’s going to come off in the way that I want it too.”

She believes being able to offer the newly recruited PRIME nurses somewhere pleasant to stay is instrumental in retaining them.

“People walk into that house and they smile – it’s warm, comfortable and nice.”

With her own staff accommodation project, she says success would be to have it fully occupied by staff, but she is planning to also list it as an Airbnb to offset costs in the meantime.

Her own memories of accommodation as a rural locum include a cold, dingy flat right beside a railway line with trains clattering past in the middle of the night. “It was not attractive.”

Right through to the “most lovely, lovely Airbnb in Martinborough” and other places where there was “community loveliness”. Like arriving in Tapanui at night to find somebody had been in to light the fire and ensure the was house warm and light.

She would be keen to see what accommodation options other rural practices have on offer.

“I think the rural practices would surprise you with the fun and quirky [accommodation],” says Dr Creegan.

“Rural practices are gorgeous. They are in the nicest parts of the country – that would be my opinion – so often they have little accommodation options that are hugely, hugely appealing.”