TWO major Scottish health boards are planning to cut jobs, according to plans submitted to the Scottish Government.
NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Lothian intend to reduce staff by a combined total of 115 posts this financial year.
The cuts in NHS Lothian are described as reflecting "local financial viability" and include the loss of 11 nurses and midwives.
In Lanarkshire the health board has not determined which groups of staff will be affected, but the staff loses are said to be a result of "service redesign and cash releasing efficiency programmes".
NHS 24, the health service helpline, is also planning to shed 50 jobs with a significant reduction in call handlers apparently on the cards.
As other health boards are recruiting staff the overall NHS workforce in Scotland will increase. Almost 100 more medical staff and more than 400 extra nursing staff are to be sought.
Health Secretary Shona Robison welcomed the increase in NHS staff and said: “Today’s figures show that to give people the high quality health care they deserve, we are investing in and supporting a highly skilled NHS Scotland workforce.
“As the demand on our health service grows, we must continue to grow and invest in our NHS workforce. At the request of the Scottish Government, health boards have very carefully assessed their workforce needs for the coming year and identified the number of additional staff required to help deliver services."
However, Ellen Hudson, associate director of the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said the number of vacancies for nurses in the Scottish health service was rising with 2200 jobs currently unfilled.
She said: "This widening gap in staffing is not sustainable and puts even more pressure on existing staff who are working flat out on our wards and across communities. Nursing staff are already feeling unable to provide the care they would like to and in fact the last NHS staff survey showed that only a quarter of nursing and midwifery staff feel that there are enough staff to do their job properly.
"We need to look at how our health services are delivered if they are to be sustainable into the future."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel