Villagers in Cornwall have made a nationwide appeal for GPs as they face the loss of their local practice.

The residents of the picture-postcard fishing village of Mevagissey are using a hashtag #willyoubemygp as part of their campaign together with Youtube videos.

Their local practice is due to close at the end of July following the retirement of partner Dr Katherine James, who has said she will hand back her contract.

In the video residents chant: “Be our GP. We are a lovely community. We need you.”

The practice has a list of about 5,300 patients and opportunities to treat the visitors who pack the village in the summer months.

Campaigner Kim Andrews told the Guardian: “There’s no point in us saying that we want to get a doctor to come down here, if we can’t demonstrate that a doctor might be interested in doing that.

“There might be a doctor out there who maybe had never thought about moving to Cornwall. Maybe they think of Cornwall as somewhere they go on holiday once every ten years. I think the first step is to remind them that we’re here and it’s a lovely place to live.”

Former GP Dr Marlene Behennah, who retired in 2002 after 30 years of practice in the village, added: “I’m very very sad about this. I mean, this is my life’s work.”

She added: “If you’re a young doctor and you have a family, you don’t want – when you’ve finished at the end of the day – to spend two hours collecting data for the government. Why should they spend two hours doing nonsense after working all day?”