Leading learning about remote and rural health and care
Leading learning about remote and rural health and care
NES's National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care (National Centre) played a strategic leadership role at the recent RGPAS Annual Conference – as main sponsor, keynote contributor, and exhibitor.
The conference presents geographically dispersed practitioners with a valuable opportunity to meet face-to-face, discuss, learn, and share topical issues that affect remote and rural health and care.
National learning
RGPAS offers a forum for rural GPs to connect, including for mutual, self-support, for discussion and education and research around rural healthcare issues and practice, and for encouragement and training support for students interested in rural practice.
NES's National Centre supports the rural workforce, by promoting and enabling evidence-informed and practitioner-led learning and structured evaluation in order to understand impact and inform future programme development. Sharing and learning about specialised topics in an immersive way does not come around regularly – an opportunity that delegates, speakers, and the NES team embraced.
On the day, National Centre colleagues: showcased NES-supported rural initiatives, held two-way dialogue with practitioners, and tested a new approach to live conference evaluation using Mentimeter to capture immediate feedback on relevance, learning, and priorities for future support. This represents the first time the National Centre has led a real-time evaluative approach at a national professional conference. Insights gathered will be used to inform ongoing work and future planning, including considerations for Phase 2 of the National Centre.
Enhanced understanding
Collectively, NES's support and attendance aimed to enhance understanding of national learning on rural primary care, strengthen relationships with the rural GP workforce, and increase awareness of NES's role in enabling education, research, and service improvement in remote, rural, and island contexts.
The National Centre team looks forward to continuing the discussions about, and progressing planned activity in support of, rural primary care – enabling practitioners’ ongoing engagement with National Centre resources and learning.
Find out more
Contact: nes.ruralteam@nhs.scot
February, 20 2026