Chamber and committees

Doctors in research posts receivecareer advice from their clinical or medical supervisors. In addition, medical deaneriesare able to provide careers advice to all doctors.

Recruitment and selection toall speciality training posts is carried out on the basis of fair and open competition.The competences required for each specialty have been widely disseminated, throughthe medical Royal Colleges, PMETB and the NHS Education for Scotland websites. Thecriteria used at interview will be based on these specialty-specific competences. Offers of training posts will be made on the basis of an applicant’s ranking at interview and theirpreferences for specialty, programme and location.

The Scottish Government is currentlyconsulting on the recommendations made in the Tooke report.

An additional 30 training postsat ST3 level across medical specialities have been made available for doctors whoeither did not apply or were unsuccessful in obtaining a post in 2007 and are nowtrying to gain a higher specialist training post.

The First Ministerreplied to your letter on 30 November 2007.

All schools are expectedto provide health education, which includes substance misuse education, as partof the 5 to 14 Health Education guidelines. Local authorities are encouraged toaddress health education within a comprehensive programme of personal and socialeducation. Drugs education includes controlled drugs, safe use of medicines, alcohol,tobacco and solvents.

Scottish Government sponsored research on the effectivenessof drugs education in schools (published in March 2007) found that 97% of primaryand 99.7% of secondary schools in Scotland provide drugseducation with all categories of substance (alcohol, controlled drugs, medicine,solvents and tobacco) covered in all years. The vast majority of special schools(41 out of 43 that responded to the survey) also provided drugs education to eithertheir primary or secondary pupils.

The Health and Wellbeingarea of the new 3 to 18 curriculum is likely to include outcomes and experiencesthat will provide teachers with opportunities to develop young people’s awarenessof alcohol, drugs and other substances and the associated risks to health. It willremain the position that it is for individual authorities and schools to decidethe best way of achieving those outcomes.

The amount spent onclinical countermeasures will depend upon the competitive procurement process. However,the Scottish Government’s draft budget makes provision for an expenditure of over£100 million on clinical countermeasures over the next three years.

The increase in stockpiles of clinical countermeasuresfor a flu pandemic will be funded through the Health and Wellbeing portfolio andwill be a mixture of resource and capital spend.

The school basedpreventive dental service will be based on the Scottish Index of MultipleDeprivation (SIMD) which is the Scottish Government’s tool for identifying small areaconcentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland.

I launched ChildsmileSchool, the school-based preventive dental service, on 3 December 2007 in Fife and it will expand to the Bordersand Tayside with a view to rolling out across the rest of Scotland.