This search includes all content on the Scottish Parliament website, except for Votes and Motions. All Official Reports (what has been said in Parliament) and Questions and Answers are available from 1999. You can refine your search by adding and removing filters.
Another point that was flagged up—I do not think that we have dealt with it—relates to advances in medicine and how young people who might not have been expected to live very long are now living a lot longer.
It is a place where people can be observed and where, without admitting them to medicine, the A and E ward or the psychiatric ward, they can be kept safe until they have sobered up and daytime services are open.
A perfect example is that, in the next decade, we will absolutely end up in a world in which we begin to see huge breakthroughs in medicine, using AI that allow us to tackle major diseases.
What we have been able to do, in particular in general practice, is look at whole-person medicine. What is the difference between general practice and specialist services?
I will give you a quick case study to show how that translates into particular scenarios. The person who we have called Mr M is a 45-year-old JSA claimant who was sanctioned for three months for failing to attend a work-related training appointment.
Is there a bigger role for GPs, the health service and social work services to prescribe not necessarily medicine but going along to some of your clubs and that sort of thing?
We believe that, in addition to the more traditional forms of treatment, such as medicine and mental state monitoring, a range of psychological and social therapies is required.
However, prisons work mainly as a primary care service but with a little bit of hospital service—the administration of medicines—so work is needed to make the IT system fit that sort of prescribing administration, which will take some development.