The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Health boards still short of nurses and midwives
Staff turnover in Fife has reached its highest level since 2011
Health boards in Tayside and Fife are short of hundreds of nurses and midwives, official figures show.
There are about 450 vacancies for the posts amid high rates of staff turnover across Courier Country.
Fife is also down the equivalent of 37.5 consultants – a vacancy rate of 13.8%, compared with the national figure of 8.5%.
Meanwhile, staff turnover in the kingdom has reached its highest level since 2011.
The health board was one of five in the country that failed to hit a key mental health waiting-time target for children.
Just 75.6% of youngsters were seen within 18 weeks of referral, against the target of 90%. That compares with 96.6% at Tayside. Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said: “We need to see the NHS recruitment crisis brought to an end, but these figures show that the situation is still worsening in Fife.
“This is having a knock-on effect on the quality of care provided to patients and the staff under pressure to provide cover.”
NHS Tayside has 341.7 vacancies for nurses and midwives, the Scottish Government figures show.
A Tayside spokesman said: “Like many other health boards, NHS Tayside is affected by a national shortage in some professions, including nursing staff.
“We have an ongoing active recruitment to fill vacancies as they arise, including targeting the recruitment of all new nursing graduates, and have recently been successful in attracting a further 167 newly-qualified nurses to Tayside.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Fife said they are on a recruitment drive for consultants and have reduced vacancies across their workforce.
“This has included significantly increasing the number of nurses and midwives working in Fife over the last year,” she said.
On waiting times for children, the health board said new posts had been created to significantly improve capacity to “meet the challenge of increased demand on our services”.
Health secretary Shona Robison said: “Under this Government, there are now over 11,800 more whole time equivalent staff working in our NHS, with more consultants, nurses and midwives delivering care for the people of Scotland, helping ensure people all across Scotland get the high-quality NHS services that they rightly expect.”