Fifteen vacancies for consultants, registrars and junior doctors need filling and the likes of cardiologists found as a second three-storey clinical building is constructed.

Staffing of the planned Western Cancer Centre will also boost the ranks of doctors at the hospital.

Hospital general manager Debbie Bickerton currently has funding to employ a “second neurologist, palliative care specialist, emergency department anaesthetist and fill a few other, mainly registrar, positions”.

For the first time recruitment of doctors is being aided by marketing of the benefits of coming to Dubbo. 

“I think it’s about getting the word out that we have the vacancies but it is also about the career progression and lifestyle they can have in Dubbo,” Ms Bickerton said.

Recently, she and director of medical services Dr Geoff Hardacre interviewed senior doctors at the hospital who told of getting to “do and see things” they would never have been able to in Sydney. 

“It’s not going backwards in your career to come to Dubbo,” Ms Bickerton said.

Dr Hardacre said the “first-class” doctors were working in a facility expected to become the “best regional hospital for investigations” through acquisition of equipment such as an MRI machine and a PET scanner.

He said the hospital was “quite an attractive workplace” in a city where doctors’ spouses and partners could be helped to find jobs, education was “adequately covered” and easy commutes to work allowed for trips home at lunchtime to “check the dog".

Campaign partners are Dubbo Regional Council, Dubbo Private Hospital, the University of Sydney’s School of Rural Health and Charles Sturt University. 

It is being run across social and traditional media platforms with newsletters sent to an array of medical and healthcare organisations and the Dubbo Hospital Careers website in the planning.