The NHS in Scotland is forecasting it could lose the equivalent of 3,790 full time staff over the next year.
The figure includes 1,523 nursing and midwifery posts and 1,053 administration service jobs. The workforce projections have been published following pressure from opposition parties at Holyrood.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said there would be no compulsory redundancies and the figures “were not set in stone”.
Read more at BBC Health.
Consultants must demonstrate effective use of their Supporting Professional Activities to ensure employers support them.
This is the message of a BMA report on SPAs, which reminds employers that under the consultant contract a consultant should in most cases undertake 7.5 direct clinical care programmed activities and 2.5 SPAs.
It also calls on NHS managers must invest in their consultants to enable them to improve their skills, develop research and new techniques, build their services and contribute to innovation. This is particularly important during a period of financial constraint, the BMA says.
The report includes examples of achievements made by consultants across Scotland, which have only been possible because of SPA time and demonstrates the importance of non-clinical time to promoting quality in NHS services.
Tayside consultant, Dr Stephen Curran, used his SPA time to set up a community-based eating disorder service for his health board; Mr Alastair Murray, orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, was able to create a new service for treating clubfoot in South East Scotland; and, Dr Graham Tydeman, O&G consultant in Fife, designed and implemented one of the first fully integrated video archive, telemetry and electronic reporting and audit packages in fetal medicine, which is now used in over 30 units in the UK.
Dr Charles Saunders, chairman of the BMA’s Scottish Consultants Committee, said: “The Scottish Government is shortly to publish a Quality Strategy for the NHS in Scotland and the role of consultants as clinical leaders is central to this agenda. NHS managers must not be short sighted and recognise that SPA time is an essential part of a consultant’s role. SPA time is also essential to enable consultants to keep up to date with their skills as well as to develop and innovate services.
“Consultants want to improve services for patients. It’s largely down to their persistence, dogged determination and leadership that these services have developed to the benefit of their patients.”
Read more on SPAs.
A sustained attack on consultants’ distinction awards in Scotland has been dismissed as ill informed by doctors’ leaders.
Doctors’ representatives in England say they have no fears that the government would attempt to abolish the Clinical Excellence Awards, negotiated as part of consultants’ remuneration.
In Scotland, Dr Ian Mckee a Scottish National Party MSP and a former GP, has called for reform of the Scottish system of distinction awards for senior doctors.
He has questioned the need for the Scottish SNP Government to set aside £30 million for next year’s awards. “If consultants are getting the equivalent of a junior government minister’s salary on top of their own salary this latest round of awards does look bit off,” he said.
He has called for the awards to be frozen in the short term. Other politicians have called for the system to be scrapped.
Stephen Campion, chief executive of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, said: “It is a very real worry that ill informed speculation and comment will be made on anything that could remotely be seen to be a bonus because that is the political and economic climate that we are currently working in.
“But the important thing to understand is that CEAs are not a bonus. A bonus is based on profit share while the CEAs are paid to recognise the work such as teaching and research that consultants do which is of added value and benefit to the NHS.”
For 2009/10, a level one CEA was worth £2,957 while the highest level 12 (or platinum) award was £75,796.
Paul Flynn, deputy chairman of the BMA’s consultants committee, said: “At the moment both ourselves and the Department of Health through the Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards recognise that CEAs reward excellence among consultants.
“The scheme is part and parcel of consultants’ remuneration and if the government wanted to change that we would expect them to open negotiations with us. I don’t believe the system in England is under threat.”
A Scottish government spokesman said that in evidence to the pay review body this year they had recommended a pay freeze for consultants and no uplift to the amount payable as individual distinction awards.
A spokesman for the BMA in Scotland said: “Scotland needs to retain the distinction awards system in order to encourage innovation and to prevent consultants from leaving to work south of the border where they can traditionally earn more.”
Read more on Clinical Excellence Awards.
