CONCERNS about staffing shortages in NHS Scotland are being raised by employees at least 50 times a week, including worries over a lack of suitably trained workers, according to new figures.

Complaints have been lodged registering anxiety about staffing levels, including a lack of people with specialist expertise, more than 2,500 times since 2013. The rate appears to be increasing, with data from 2010 showing about 1,500 incidents of staffing shortages, following Freedom of Information (FoI) requests.

Concerns about staffing levels were raised 676 times in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 606 times in Lothian and 434 in Lanarkshire during a 12-month period. Not all health boards provided details.

Theresa Fyffe, director of the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said: "We know that in many areas, staff are run off their feet, which is not good for the people they're caring for. Indeed, our most recent survey of nursing staff found that six out of 10 feel they are too busy to provide the level of care they would like to and feel under pressure.

"The most recent Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey published by the Scottish Government found that about 10 per cent of patients themselves feel there's not enough staff to treat them. This cannot go on."

Scottish Labour wellbeing spokeswoman Rhoda Grant submitted FoI bids to boards asking how many times workers had raised concern about staffing levels in the past 12 months, to help show the scale of the problem.

NHS Borders, Grampian, Tayside and Orkney were unable to provide details. Dumfries and Galloway said no formal complaints had been raised with HR. Highland health board said 428 staff availability incidents had been recorded, while Forth Valley, Ayrshire and Arran and Fife had from 150 to 170 each. The total number of concerns recorded by the boards was 2,648. It is unclear how managers responded to each problem.

Ms Grant said: "Our NHS is at crisis point and we know that there is a £450m black hole in the SNP's plans for the health service. It is time for the SNP to take responsibility for their actions and fully address the pressures being felt by staff and patients."

She called on SNP leader-elect Nicola Sturgeon to make addressing the problems facing the NHS one of her top priorities in office as First Minister.

Dr Peter Bennie, chairman of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said the NHS was facing "a real recruitment crisis" and urgent action was needed to "address the high number of vacancies across services".

He added: "Both NHS employers and the Scottish Government need to work with doctors at local and national level to consider how to make services sustainable in the immediate and long term and how to make jobs attractive to doctors considering working in Scotland."

The Herald's campaign NHS: Time for Action is seeking a plan showing how capacity, including staff numbers, in the NHS and social care services need to grow to cope with the growing elderly population.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "There is a record number of staff working in Scotland's NHS, and under this government the NHS workforce has increased by almost seven per cent with over 8,800 additional staff employed. This includes a record number of qualified nurses and midwives, up 4.4 per cent, and a 31.2 per cent increase in NHS consultants under this government, with over 1,100 additional consultants than 2006."

She added that workforce planning tools had been introduced for nurses in April this year to ensure the right number of trained staff were recruited and deployed. A similar tool for A&E departments is to be rolled out next year.

NHS Scotland chief executive Paul Gray yesterday said that health boards were finding it difficult to recruit consultants to work in busy casualty wards. He stressed the recruitment crisis only affected emergency departments and was not a problem in other inpatient units.

Mr Gray's comments came on a visit to discuss shortages with senior doctors at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. They are concerned it is putting the lives of patients at risk.

But he is confident the situation would improve and insisted NHS Grampian, which lost its chairman Bill Howatson this week, is on its way to finding a solution.

Mr Gray said: "I think NHS Grampian, in common with many other boards in Scotland, is facing pressure on recruitment of emergency department consultants.

"But the overall staffing levels in NHS Scotland are high and we are not facing a pan-Scotland pressure on recruitment in every speciality. There is international demand for emergency department consultants and I think it is an area that suits particular working styles.

"What we are doing is making sure that emergency departments across Scotland are as attractive as possible with good shift patterns and high standards of staffing."