Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

Nursing vacancies double in Tayside and Fife

Post Thumbnail

The number of nursing and midwifery vacancies in Tayside and Fife has almost doubled in the past five years, new figures have revealed.

Analysis from Scottish Labour shows that since 2011 the number of unfilled posts nationwide has increased from 661.9 to 2,525.5 – a 281% increase.

Locally, those have gone up from 68.5 to 171.4 in Tayside and from 47.1 to 87.4 in Fife.

Anas Sarwar, Labour’s health spokesman, said: “After a decade of division, the SNP has delivered a staffing crisis in our NHS. The number of unfilled posts for nurses and midwives has rocketed. SNP ministers are in complete denial about the fact that our health service does not have the staff it needs to deliver the care patients deserve.”

He added: “This is the result of ten years of SNP mismanagement of our health service. The Nationalists slashed training places for nurses and midwives and cut funding for medical students and now our health service is feeling the pressure.”

The number of long term vacancies – posts going unfilled for more than three months – has increased by an even greater rate, going from 181.2 to 736.6.

This represents a more than 300% increase since 2011, when the SNP formed a majority government.

In Fife, the long term vacancy rates have more than halved over the same period, from 47.1 to 19.5.

They have increased by tenfold in Tayside, however, from just 3.4 in 2011 to 38.5 in December last year.

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “There are more qualified nurses and midwives working in Scotland’s health service than ever before.

“Under this government, numbers have increased by 6.8% to more than 43,800 whole time equivalent. An organisation of this size will always carry some vacancies, and any fluctuation in nursing staff levels is due to our efforts to expand capacity by recruiting more staff. In January of this year we announced a 4.7% increase in intakes to pre-registration Nursing and Midwifery training programmes for 2017/18.

“This is the fifth successive rise and equates to 3,360 entry places.

“This spring we will publish a new National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan. This will set out the workforce we will need in the future, and how we will achieve it.”