FRESH fears that accident and emergency departments are facing a recruitment crisis have been raised as two-thirds of training vacancies for senior doctors are left unfilled.

Just five out of 15 posts to complete training as a consultant in emergency medicine were taken at the end of this year's major recruitment round.

The search for tomorrow's acute medicine specialists - who deal with urgent hospital admissions - was no better, with four out of 14 senior training positions filled.

Junior doctors are embarking on careers in these two vital medical fields - with all the vacancies in the first year of the training programmes taken. However, they are deciding not to move onto the final stages of training to become a consultant. During these late training years junior doctors are vital to providing hospital services, particularly at night.

Dr David Reid, chair of the Scottish Junior Doctors Committee of the British Medical Association, said: "I think these are interesting but challenging specialties. Many junior doctors are put off by the perceived intensity of work. It is constant, and does not really have quiet periods."

Both emergency and acute medicine require doctors to provide cover late at night and over weekends.

Dr Reid said this issue was compounded by the departments being short of medical staff, making the anti-social shifts more frequent. "It is a bit of a vicious cycle that these programmes are stuck in," he said.

He noted that the Scottish Government is trying to improve the work-life balance of junior doctors with targets to prevent health boards asking them to work seven shifts in a row.

Dr Reid said: "They are trying to make sure people are not coming to work fatigued because at the end of every doctor there is a patient."

However, it seems to be increasingly difficult to attract doctors to these frontline specialities each year. In 2011 76 per cent of senior acute medicine training places in Scotland were taken, in 2012 53 per cent, in 2014 it was 41 per cent and this year it is 28 per cent.

UK-wide the figures for acute medicine look slightly better with 61 per cent of posts filled, but the situation for emergency medicine is worse with just 19 per cent filled.

It came a day after The Herald revealed one in five training slots for GPs has also been left empty this summer. There are 65 training posts for family doctors lying vacant.

Jenny Marra, Scottish Labour's health spokeswoman, said: "There is real concern about recruitment across the whole of the NHS, not just for doctors but nurses too.

"The SNP Government must urgently address what is clearly a recruitment problem before it becomes a crisis that affects the wider health service."

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: "Under this Government, we have the highest NHS staffing levels ever, with a record 37.5 per cent increase in numbers of consultants.

"However, we recognise there are ongoing recruitment and retention challenges. In response to NHS board requests, we have approved growth in the overall medical training establishment by 95 posts in the last two years. It is inevitable that, in the short term, this will result in a slightly higher vacancy rate.

"The increased training posts includes core, acute and emergency medicine, all of which feed the future supply of level 4 staff and above. These training posts are filled at, or close to, 100 per cent."