Dr Rebecca Payne

Dr Rebecca Payne is an island doctor. For part of each year she works for NHS Orkney on Hoy, an island of 400 people with the nearest hospital a weather-dependent ferry ride away. Working with a fantastic team of islanders and protected from the weather by an eccentric range of functional clothing, her role includes whatever the day demands, from helicopter evacuations through to sandwich making and everything in between. 

Her island career began in 2020, when she joined the Orkney out-of-hours service, just days before essential travel stopped, leaving her having to quickly source an alternative route to get to work. She has since worked across the Orkney isles, the Western Isles and the Falkland Islands, where she served as one of the most remote doctors in the world, doing home visits by plane and admiring the penguins. 

Off-island, Rebecca leads a parallel life as an academic GP. She is Director of the North Wales Centre for Primary Care Research at Bangor University, where her research focuses on rural healthcare and remote consulting. In 2024 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study technology-supported rural healthcare in Alaska and Australia. She lives on Anglesey, North Wales with her bemused husband, two student children and a collection of spinning wheels, mythology books and other artefacts from her daughter’s many hobbies. Rebecca is currently working on her first book about life as one of the most remote doctors in the world.