Bringing rural healthcare into focus
One hundred years ago saw the publication of the Dewar Report of 1912. Addressing the needs of Scotland’s remote and rural communities, the report is credited with laying some of the foundations to the National Health Service which was subsequently launched in 1948. There will be celebrations throughout the year to mark this historic paper, which summarises issues which are still very relevant to remote and rural communities today.
1948 was also a key moment in photojournalism, when LIFE Magazine featured the photography of W Eugene Smith. His photoessay of the work of Colorado country doctor Ernest Ceriani became a benchmark for photojournalism, and remains an iconic reference in the power of photography to provide perspective and insight. A YouTube presentation of the article is available, as is a commentary of the story.
To mark the Dewar centenary, RuralGP.com invites doctors, nurses and any other interested parties to submit photos that epitomise rural health care today. Everyone from Scotland, the UK and beyond is welcome to submit their perspective.
There are a few simple rules:
- Photos featuring patients or colleagues must only be posted with the highest level of discretion. Submitting individuals must take full responsibility to ensure that any individuals in photos give their full, informed and documented consent to their image being published publically to the world web. Think about treating this as a challenge to use symbolism.
- There is a suggested contribution rate of up to 10 photos per month per individual. This is flexible, but designed to maintain a high degree of accuity and quality in the photos presented.
- Copyright will remain up to submitting individuals. You are encouraged to adopt one form of the Creative Commons licence, perhaps allowing for non-profit use. It would be helpful to allow photos to be embedded in other blog stories.
- Rules may be added or changed as time goes on in order to react to any issues as they present.
Please have fun and enjoyment in submitting these images. It is hoped that over the next few months, this group will become a useful archive of photos and stories that show what rural practice is like today, across the continents.
Questions or comments can be addressed to: photos@ruralgp.com.
How do I submit images?
Ideally, please join the Flickr group here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ruralgp/ - membership is by approval purely to avoid spam photos.
Alternatively you can email photos (max 2MB, please resize images to 1000 px longest side) to photos@ruralgp.com
Do I need to have a specific camera?
Absolutely not. Nowadays, nearly everyone has a camera in their pocket. Whether you want to scan, email, upload to Flickr, tweet or instagram… the quality of the photo is in the image itself. We want as many perspectives as possible, from across the world and spectrum of rurality. Like a time capsule of what it’s like to be a rural practitioner in 2012.
