We are appointing a UK & European-trained Private Doctor for a full-time, live-in Travelling engagement supporting a private family’s principal aboard a private yacht across the Mediterranean.
The itinerary includes the Greek Islands, Monaco, the Côte d’Azur, Ibiza, Mallorca, Marbella and the Algarve.
Key responsibilities and clinical duties
- Clinical leadership: lead the ongoing medical management of the Principal, including the optimisation of chronic conditions and immediate response to acute presentations. You will make critical clinical decisions with autonomy.
- Continuity of care: act as the Principal’s central clinical point of contact, working with the family’s own office so that diagnostics and sub-specialty input arranged through it are seamless for the patient.
- Remote and yacht medicine: maintain precise standards of care during international travel, managing medical logistics and emergencies in remote maritime and aviation environments with limited resources.
- Multidisciplinary collaboration: work within the household’s private team alongside private nurses, physiotherapists and support staff, delivering calm, precise care in an exclusive environment.
Professional requirements
- UK & European training: medical degree (MD/MBBS) from a recognised institution in the UK, Ireland or an accepted European jurisdiction.
- Experience: a minimum of five years post-specialisation; family medicine, internal medicine or emergency medicine preferred.
- Language: fluency in English is required; French, Spanish or Arabic is an advantage.
- Discretion: a proven history of protocol-led practice within private family settings.
- Flexibility: willingness to undertake international travel, specifically yacht itineraries, with all logistics handled by the household.
- Availability: availability to start within six weeks of offer.
- Complete flexibility: complete flexibility around the family’s calendar.
- Mobility: the ability to relocate alone and to travel with the family worldwide, often at short notice.
The package
- Salary: £240,000 per year, tax-free.
- Accommodation: high-quality private accommodation provided aboard the yacht.
- Leave: 30 days of paid annual leave.
- Travel: all work-related international travel fully covered (business class or private aviation).
- Contract: full-time, live-in Travelling engagement, contracted directly with the family; not rotational.
Live mandate brief: this appointment is currently open. The full specification, package structure and confidential application route are held on the Private Doctor to a Private Family Principal mandate brief.
What a Private Doctor to a Private Family Principal Actually Does
The itinerary reads like a holiday. The clinical reality is sole responsibility, continuously, for one patient whose care would ordinarily be distributed across a consultant team.
You hold the whole picture: chronic disease optimisation, acute presentation, medication governance, and the judgement to escalate. At sea there is no on-call registrar and no second opinion down the corridor. When something shifts at 03:00 off the Greek coast, the assessment, the decision and the call to divert the vessel are yours alone.
Day to day that means continuous observation rather than scheduled clinics, a working knowledge of the nearest tertiary facility in every port on the itinerary, and close working with the family’s office as it arranges access to private hospitals in each port of call. Medical Staff Talent introduces and verifies clinicians. The engagement is contracted directly between the family and the clinician, and all local arrangements (visa, licensed entity, coordination with local clinics) remain with the family’s own office and advisers.
What £240,000 Tax-Free Actually Represents
The headline is £240,000, tax-free. What matters is what that figure never has to absorb.
- Accommodation is provided — aboard the vessel in season, within the family’s residence between itineraries.
- All work-related international travel is covered, business class or private aviation.
- Thirty days of paid leave per year.
- Living costs at sea are close to nil. Meals, laundry and utilities form part of the vessel’s operation.
On current UK rates, a consultant on £120,000 gross retains roughly £76,000 after income tax and national insurance — and then meets mortgage, council tax, utilities and commuting from what is left. The honest comparison is not headline against headline. It is what reaches the account and stays there. Our UK versus GCC net position calculator models it properly.
How the Year Is Structured
Mediterranean cruising runs broadly from late spring to early autumn. Outside season the Principal is generally shore-based, and the appointment continues in a residential setting rather than pausing.
This is a full-time, live-in Travelling mandate — not rotational. Families appoint a private physician for continuity: the value is that one clinician holds the Principal’s baseline and recognises the deviation from it that a locum never would.
What This Role Is Not
We would rather you self-select out now than six weeks into an itinerary.
- It is not a sabbatical with a salary. Availability is shaped by the Principal’s schedule, not yours.
- It is not a step up in clinical acuity. If your ambition is subspecialty accreditation or a tertiary caseload, a year at sea will not advance it.
- It is not anonymous work. You live alongside the family and the crew. Discretion is a daily practice, not a clause signed once.
- It is not suitable if you need a team around you. Excellent hospital physicians sometimes find sole practice at sea genuinely difficult, and that is not a failing.
Who Succeeds in It
The physicians who thrive share three things: generalist breadth deep enough to decide without a second opinion — family medicine, internal medicine and emergency medicine backgrounds transfer best; a settled personal life ashore that tolerates months away; and a temperament that treats confidentiality as professional standard rather than an imposition.
Language widens the field. English is required; French, Spanish or Arabic materially broadens which Principals you can be placed with.
Read Further
- Private doctor to a private family — the shore-based equivalent and how those mandates are structured
- Maritime and superyacht medical staffing — how private families structure medical cover at sea
- UK versus GCC net position — what a tax-free package actually leaves you with
- Our Doctors practice — clinical autonomy, surgical infrastructure and package structure across the Gulf
Not ready to apply, but want to be considered when the next onboard appointment opens? Submit your profile confidentially — maritime and private family mandates are rarely advertised twice. You can also review every current opening on our vacancies board, or browse live mandates by specialty.