The chairman of the British Medical Association in Scotland has warned there is “no way that the NHS in Scotland can survive” in its current form.
Dr Iain Kennedy issued the warning on Wednesday as he renewed his calls for a national conversation on the future of the service.
He said his NHS colleagues had told him over the past fortnight the “whole health and social care system in Scotland is broken”.
“There is no way that the NHS in Scotland can survive.
READ MORE: Glasgow sexual assault centre expects busy January
“In fact, many of my members are telling me that the NHS in Scotland has died already,” he told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme.
“It’s already broken in some parts of the country. So the time is now, we need the national conversation now, it cannot be delayed any further.”
He told BBC Scotland he will meet Health Secretary Humza Yousaf in the New Year.
Dr Kennedy said the Scottish Government was “well off” the 800 GPs it wanted to recruit by 2027, and that the number of vacancies for hospital doctors was also high.
He said there had been an “abject failure of workforce planning” and health staff were “exhausted, burnt-out and broken”.
“Over the past two weeks I have received testimonies from nearly 200 doctors, and what they’re telling me is that the whole health and social care system in Scotland is broken,” he said.
“They are telling me that NHS Scotland is failing their patients and failing the workforce, and they’re suffering from moral injury from constantly having to apologise to their patients.”
He said the number of vacancies in the health service was the worst he had seen in his 30-year career as a doctor.
Junior doctors in Scotland are preparing for industrial action as part of their demand for higher pay, and Dr Kennedy said their pay had “eroded by 23.5% since 2008”.
“They’ve had enough, they’ve told us that they’ve had enough, and they’ve been trying to get action from the Scottish Government but their requests are falling on deaf ears,” he said.
Dr Kennedy said while junior doctors in England were taking part in a strike ballot in January, north of the border it would be in the spring.
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