Staffing crisis highlighted by students helping NHS
The Scottish Government’s preparations to ask medical students to support the NHS as porters and auxiliary staff this winter highlights an “unsustainable” staffing crisis in the health service, the union BMA Scotland has said.
The government has written to Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities to ask for advice on requesting the help of fourth and fifth-year medical students this winter.
Students were brought in previously to help during the Covid-19 pandemic, and have also been asked to help in other devolved nations.
While studying they can work for a maximum of 15 hours per week.
Lewis O’connor, chair of the BMA’S Scottish medical students committee, said the move highlighted the scale of current problems in the NHS, and called on the government to come up with an urgent workforce plan. He said: “We know we must do whatever it takes to protect and support both primary and secondary care over what will be along winter.
"Additional help is always welcome, but I do think the need to ask medical students to assist emphasises the seriousness and scale of the pressures on NHS services and frontline health staff.
"It demonstrates that the staffing crisis is unsustainableand needs to be seriously addressed before the situation worsens yet again.
"Medical students will no doubt put themselves forward to offer their support, but this cannot be a long-term strategy to plug significant staffing gaps in the NHS and further highlightsthe need for an urgent workforce plan to address the huge short, medium and long-term staffing issues we have.”