Question reference: S6W-26867
- Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 16 April 2024
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Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 30 April 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address the reported high level of vacancies for psychiatrist posts.
Answer
We are taking forward a number of steps to address issues around vacancy levels for psychiatry posts.
Through the Psychiatry Working Group we are actively looking at how we can better support the recruitment and retention of psychiatrists in NHS Scotland.
We also continue to work with NHS Education for Scotland and The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland to encourage medical students to consider a long-term career as a psychiatrist. This work includes the ‘Choose Psychiatry’ campaign, undergraduate taster sessions and improved psychiatric placements at Foundation level. 10 additional Core Psychiatry posts were created in 2022, followed by another 15 in April 2023. As part of this year’s expansion we will be adding a further 12, along with 2 extra run-through training posts in both Intellectual Disability and Child & Adult Psychiatry (16 posts in total).
Recruitment into Core Psychiatry has improved drastically in recent years. With the exception of one unfilled post in 2020, 100% of entry level posts have now filled for the fourth consecutive year (up from 63% in 2018).
The most recent publication of Mental Health Workforce data (5 March 2024) shows that under this Government and since 2007, the number of Psychiatrist Consultants across All Specialities in NHS Scotland has increased by 16.7% to 527.0 whole time equivalent posts.