Question reference: S6W-02826
- Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 7 September 2021
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Current status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 September 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how it is addressing the 4,854 nursing and midwifery vacancies nationally (7.1% of posts) that have been reported by NHS Education for Scotland.
Answer
Numbers of Nurses and Midwives in Scotland have increased by 12.1% (or 6,850.9 WTE) in this Government, since September 2006.
As a result of efforts to enhance staffing capacity during the Covid-19 pandemic, Nursing and Midwifery numbers have increased by 4.9% since December 2019 (60,651.0 to 63,634.1 WTE).
Despite consistent NHS workforce growth over nine years, it is common for vacancies to increase in the quarter to June. This period coincides with end of financial year retirements and directly precedes autumn graduate recruitment.
Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we have invested in significantly increasing the NHS workforce; and have supported Boards to extensively redeploy staff to respond to changing clinical priorities.
We are also investing £11 million in new recruitment activity and in the creation of a National Centre for Workforce Supply. The Centre will offer NHS Boards expert advice on labour market intelligence and coordinate recruitment campaigns, providing vital additional support to health board recruitment teams. It will take full account of numbers of vacancies within Boards in doing so.
We have also sustained our investment in medical and nursing education during the course of the pandemic, with record numbers commencing training in 2020-21 (4,206 for nursing and 1,138 for medicine); and that number is set to rise further this autumn.