Question reference: S5W-34269
- Asked by: Lewis Macdonald, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 23 December 2020
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Current status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 20 January 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what work it is doing to invest in the medical workforce in order to reduce medical agency spend in the North of Scotland NHS region.
Answer
In December 2019, we published the first Integrated National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan in the UK. Developed in partnership with COSLA, the Integrated Plan sets out how health and social care services will meet growing demand to ensure the right numbers of staff, with the right skills, across health and social care services.
The Integrated Plan and the proceeding National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan parts 1-3 include a number of commitments to increase the medical workforce supply. This includes an additional 50-100 medical undergraduate places by 2021, which we are on track to deliver. A proportion of these posts will be based in the North of Scotland.
As well as more established specialties, the Scottish Government has also provided funding for training posts which focus on supporting rural healthcare. The Scottish Graduate Entry Medicine (ScotGEM) programme is a collaboration between the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews, which is designed to develop doctors interested in a career as a generalist practitioner within NHS Scotland and focuses on rural medicine and healthcare improvement.
In addition to encouraging those at the beginning of their medical career to consider practicing in more rural areas, the Scottish Government is also providing funding to the Scottish Clinical Collaborative. This is a joint project between the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Scottish Government to give experienced retired or semi-retired consultant surgeons, anaesthetists and other doctors the opportunity to work in rural general hospitals. The project will help ensure that vital expertise is not lost and will help to maintain our rural healthcare services.
Along with the Integrated Plan, we have provided updated guidance on workforce planning to all health and social care organisations in Scotland. Within this supplement to the Integrated Plan are a series of NHS Scenarios, including on the medical workforce. This supports NHS planners to proactively and effectively plan their workforce, ensuring Boards have the correct mix and number of staff in place.
This approach should contribute to a reduced reliance on medical agency staffing in the future.