It would be an unusual business that chose to meet its staffing needs by hiring a string of expensive agency temps when it might solve the problem more cheaply by hiring permanent staff, yet the NHS appears to be falling into that trap.
In the year to March, health boards spent £60 million on hiring temporary doctors and nurses, up 25% on the year before, with the cost of agency nurses showing a particularly steep increase of 60%. This is alarming since it raises the possibility that locums are being used, not just to plug unavoidable gaps in staffing caused by staff absences, but as a substitute for full-time staff.
Locum doctors and nurses will always have an important role to play, from GPs brought in to provide holiday cover to nurses boosting staffing levels during unexpectedly busy periods. The concern is, however, that the dramatic increase in the number of medical staff being employed on a short-term basis is masking long-term gaps in the workforce. The high cost of locums in Scotland's three island health boards, Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles, is an indicator of how difficult it can be to attract permanent staff to remote communities. Certain medical specialisms also struggle to fill posts because of perceptions that the job is particularly stressful, emergency medicine for one. More than 50 hospital consultant posts in Scotland have been vacant for at least six months. Could it be that increasing patient demand is also leading to higher demand for staff? The Herald's campaign, NHS: Time for Action, has called for a review of staffing levels to ensure that the right staff are in place to cope with the growing demand from the ageing population. The system of medical training is supposed to ensure the right numbers of doctors and nurses are produced to meet the NHS's needs, but the jobs available to them on qualifying must be appealing enough to attract, and, crucially, retain them.
The Scottish Government is working to reduce reliance on locums, but it will need to assess whether it is doing enough. This level of increase in spending on locums cannot continue.
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 hereComments are closed on this article