Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 17 March 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-34347 by Maree Todd on 28 February 2025, what its position is on whether its Psychiatry Recruitment and Retention Working Group (a) is a sufficient response to the reported workforce crisis in psychiatry and (b) will result in the reported workforce crisis in psychiatry being resolved, and, if so, by when; through what means; how many new psychiatrists this will require, and where these psychiatrists will be sourced from.
It is important that we work closely with leaders in the Psychiatry profession to address the challenges they are currently facing and the Psychiatry Recruitment and Retention Working Group are currently working towards producing a series of recommendations which will be presented to Ministers in Spring 2025.
Whilst the working group has been ongoing, the Scottish Government has worked in partnership with the profession on a range of measures to support recruitment and retention in psychiatry. This has included funding and supporting recruitment stands at the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) international congress events (2023 and 2024); working with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) colleagues on improvements to psychiatry webpages to increase engagement and on the promotion of vacancies; ensuring that the specific challenges facing psychiatry were considered by the Medical Locums Task and Finish Group and; supporting the Centre for Workforce Supply (CWS) in their direct work with NHS Health Boards to address challenges in filling vacancies and on the promotion of careers in Scotland.
We also continue to work with NES and the RCPsych 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. 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 been filled for the fourth consecutive year (up from 63% in 2018).