Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 15 September 2026
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-33003 by Jenni Minto on 21 January 2025, what action the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care has taken, or plans to take, to ensure that NHS boards provide continuing professional training on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) to their staff, and what the timetable is for any such future action.
The Scottish Government expects NHS Boards to ensure that staff are appropriately trained and developed in line with the Staff Governance Standard and relevant professional requirements.
To support this, we wrote to NHS Boards and General Practitioners in July 2022 to raise awareness of the NICE guideline on ME/CFS and highlight key changes in practice. The Scottish Government has also funded Action for ME and partners to develop and disseminate an online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) module on ME/CFS for health and social care professionals and has supported activity to promote awareness and uptake of the resource.
Through our ongoing engagement with NHS Boards on specialist support services for long COVID, ME/CFS and related conditions, we continue to emphasise the importance of services being informed by relevant clinical guidance, including the NICE guideline on ME/CFS.
Responsibility for workforce training and professional development rests with NHS Boards as employers. While the Scottish Government continues to promote awareness of relevant clinical guidance and educational resources it does not mandate specific continuing professional training requirements for individual conditions.