Dr Rachel Weldon - Telegraph Rachel Weldon's "Small Isles" medical practice covered the Inner Hebridean island of Eigg and its smaller neighbours, Muck, Rum and Canna, serving a population of just 170. She offered full general medical services, including minor surgery, and arranged to visit the smaller islands at least once a month, "weather permitting, and more often as clinical demand dictates." Very unusually for a GP in 2012, she was available for consultation at any time - and, as her website made clear, she was "of course" available by telephone "at all other times." Her situation required her, on occasions, to act as a paramedic, nurse or pharmacist, and she had to deal with everything from acute conditions (which she often had to manage overnight on her own) to the broken limbs sustained by climbers attempting the sheer face of An Sgùrr, on Eigg, by way of acute seasickness among judges at a Village of the Year competition. The Radio 4 series featured Phil Hammond chronicling the journeys taken over 13 years by Rachel Weldon, with her husband and boatman, Eric, and their collie dog Laurie, as they made their monthly tour of the smaller islands in a rigid inflatable. The programme was recorded on a calm day, but the couple recalled how they were once caught in a Force 8 gale, battling through waves as high as houses after they had left the island of Rum. Choppy days were just as uncomfortable: Rachel Weldon once described her rounds in such conditions as "like dancing on concrete for about an hour." Though Dutch by birth and therefore an outsider, Rachel Weldon became a popular member of the community, respected for her dedication, skill and kindness - and her tolerance of the more Bacchic aspects of island life. She was born Rachel Vermeer on September 14 1957 at Waalwijk, near Rotterdam, where her father ran a shoe factory. She studied Medicine at the University of Utrecht, where she met her husband, Eric Weldon, a painter from Airdrie who was visiting his sister. In the mid-1980s they returned to Scotland and Rachel entered general practice. Before they moved to Eigg in 1990, she worked as a GP in Keith, Fort Augustus, Helmsdale and Cromarty. Rachel Weldon was dedicated to her practice and concerned by the real possibility that the health board might decide to close it down on the ground of cost. She lost no opportunity to remind visiting politicians (including, in 2005, the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy), how disastrous it would be for the Inner Hebridean community if their local doctor's surgery was closed down. Rachel Weldon was found dead at her home on Eigg on May 2 and is believed to have taken her own life. She died three weeks after being disqualified from driving after admitting drink-driving during a visit to the mainland earlier this year. She had reported herself to the General Medical Council and was facing the prospect of an investigation into her fitness to practise. Rachel Weldon is survived by her husband. Dr Rachel Weldon, born September 14 1957, died May 2 2012