Chamber and committees

Scottish Government values the NHS workforce and is committed to investing in Scotland’s NHS workforce. Official NHS Scotland workforce statistics show record high staffing levels across all professional groups as at September 2023, including Medical and Dental and Nursing and Midwifery staff.

On 23 November 2023 we announced an additional 153 training posts for junior doctors to be created across a wide range of medical specialties: the largest annual expansion on record. This brings the total number of extra training places created since 2014 to 880. These additional posts are supported by £42m of Scottish Government funding over the next four years and will be recruited to from 2024, with successful applicants taking up post in August 2024. We have also increased nursing student numbers every year for the last decade. In addition to this we are working closely with the RCN and the RCM as part of the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce to develop alternative career pathways and working to widen access to nursing programmes.

Since autumn 2021 Scottish Government have invested £18m since autumn of 2021 to recruit 1,250 new registered nurses, midwives and allied health professionals from overseas by the end of this financial year. Over 1,000 staff have been successfully recruited to such posts so far. Scottish Government continues to encourage and support employers to prioritise wellbeing for their workforce and has launched a number of wellbeing resources. This includes the National Wellbeing Hub, the National Wellbeing Helpline and confidential mental health treatment through Workforce Specialist Service. We will continue to work with leaders across health, social care and social work as well as hearing directly from staff, to understand where the current pressures are, and what further actions can be taken to mitigate their impact on staff.

Scottish Government remains committed to reducing long waits, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic, to ensure all people receive the treatment they need as soon as possible. We’ve opened two National Treatment Centres this year, with two further centres opening in the near future. These Centres provide additional capacity for patients across Scotland and are an integral part of the wider waiting times improvement programme.

Personal devices owned and used by Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers do not have access to the Scottish Government’s corporate IT network or applications.

Ministers are briefed on best practice in respect of maintaining confidentiality of Scottish Government data when entering office or when a substantial change takes place.

Recently, Ministers have had dedicated briefings on Spear Phishing and the use of certain platforms. This has been done in partnership with the NCSC and Government Security Group.

Under section 14(1)(b) of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, education authorities have a statutory duty to make special arrangements for pupils of any age and stage of school education, who are unable to attend school due to illness, to continue receiving their education elsewhere than at an educational establishment.

The Scottish Government published guidance on the education of children unable to attend school due to ill health in June 2015. This guidance is available on our website through the following link: Education of children unable to attend school due to ill health: guidance - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Where any pupil is expected to be absent from school for a prolonged period of time due to ill health, we would urge their parents or carers to speak with the school’s head teacher at the earliest opportunity to ask for alternative arrangements to be put in place for their child whilst they remain absent.

We also published guidance on supporting children and young people with healthcare needs in schools to enable schools to support pupils with health conditions which require management during the school day. This guidance is available on our website through the following link: Supporting children and young people with healthcare needs in schools: guidance - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Where a pupil does have a health condition, whilst attending at school, staff in NHS boards, education authorities and schools should work together with the children and young people concerned, and their parents or carers and families to ensure appropriate measures to meet their individual healthcare needs are in place.

We are working with NHS Boards to maximise current resources and productivity to reduce long waits, which have been exacerbated by the impacts of the global pandemic. We remain committed to reducing waiting times year on year across the NHS as set out in the Policy Prospectus .

We are working to implement the commitments of our Neurological Care and Support – National Framework for Action 2020-25 , to improve the provision of co-ordinated health and social care and support, develop sustainable workforce models and ensure high standards of person-centred care. Since October 2020, we have provided £2.6 million to fund innovative projects working to improve outcomes for people living with neurological conditions.

Whilst the Framework is not condition specific, it covers issues affecting people with all types of neurological conditions, including dystonia. The Scottish Government is working in partnership with NHS24 to update accessible public-facing information about dystonia , and other neurological conditions, for the NHS Inform website.

We recognise that uncertainty while waiting can have an impact on health and wellbeing. That is why we have launched a new Waiting Well Hub on NHS Inform to provide patients with information to support their health and wellbeing while waiting for health and social care services. This includes information on physical and mental health, as well as advice about practical issues like money worries.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery was commissioned by the Scottish Government to establish Specialty Delivery Groups in order to support, innovate and develop high quality services across Scotland. Significant progress has been made to release outpatient activity through redesign, with over 100,000 appointments released through Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Patient-Initiated Review (PIR), well ahead of the target of 50,000 for 2023-24.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23817 on 8 January 2024. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government is clear that stoma patients should expect an equitable level of care wherever they reside in Scotland, and the responses received from the recently concluded information gathering exercise on the provision of stoma care and stoma specialist nurse coverage across Scotland's 14 territorial health boards will be an important step in achieving that when it is considered by the Scottish Executive Nurse Directors (SEND) in early 2024.

The Scottish Government’s position has been, and remains, focussed on the ‘whole cancer pathway’ which is why the 62-day standard is in place. This covers the period from an urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) referral from a primary care clinician to the start of treatment for Scotland’s most common cancers, including ovarian cancer.

The latest published statistics (July-September 2023) show the median time for an ovarian cancer patient from USC referral to first treatment is 51 days. Once a decision to treat is made, the median wait for treatment is 12 days for ovarian cancer patients.

Scottish Government officials meet with Boards’ Cancer Management Teams fortnightly (monthly for Island Boards) to ensure patients are moving timeously through these pathways and are treated as quickly as possible. Where cancer pathway challenges are identified, innovative solutions are explored and best practice shared from other areas.

We are investing £40 million over five years to support cancer services, with £10 million provided to Boards in 2023-24 alone.

The Scottish Government wants cancer patients to be treated as close to home as clinically appropriate. However, as treatments for some cancers become more complex and expensive, it becomes impossible to deliver them in every location.

Cancer services require a highly specialised workforce. In order to ensure the future sustainability of our services, we published our ten-year Cancer Strategy in which we have committed to modelling cancer workforce requirements and continue to grow the number of training places to expand our workforce.

As part of the Scottish Government’s work to develop a sustainable healthcare workforce, we continue to look for opportunities to increase levels of recruitment and retention of healthcare staff in rural areas and will develop a Rural Workforce Recruitment Strategy by the end of 2024. This will support employers to ensure that the health and social care needs of people, including women with ovarian cancer who live in rural communities, are met.

There is no specific provision for long COVID research in the Scottish Government Budget for 2024-25.

Within the Scottish Government, funding of Health and Care Research comes under the remit of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).

The CSO's Translational Clinical Studies (TCS) Committee and the Health Improvement, Protection and Services Research (HIPS) Committee each meet twice per year to consider funding applications. Details of the application process are published on the CSO website.

https://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/grant-funding/response-mode-funding-schemes/

Applications on long-COVID are welcomed. In common with all other applications, these would go through the CSO's standard independent peer review process.

To date 2 research projects on long COVID have been funded via this route:

HIPS/23/08

Long COVID And Frontline Public Service Occupations: Impacts On Employees And Organisations

University of Stirling

Dr Alice MacLean/Professor Kate Hunt

Funding awarded £296,960

HIPS/22/33

Caring for Long COVID in Primary Care: Using Patient and Professional Experience to Build Co-Designed Solutions. A Participatory, Mixed Methods Study.

University of Glasgow

Professor Catherine O’Donnell

Funding awarded £297,900

Through UK-wide funding agreements, researchers based in Scotland are able to access the following research funding programmes administered by the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR):

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME)

Evidence Synthesis

Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR)

Health Technology Assessment (HTA)

Invention for Innovation (i4i)

Programme Development Grants (PDG)

Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR)

Public Health Research (PHR)

Research for Social Care (RfSC)

Within their individual remits, the above programmes can consider applications for research in long COVID.

CSO is working with the health research community in Scotland to ensure awareness of these opportunities and to maximise the number of high quality applications from Scotland to these research funding programmes going forward.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23323 on‎ 11 December 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers