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Health Secretary responds to College of Emergency Medicine survey.

Responding to a survey on the unscheduled care across the UK from the College of Emergency of Medicine, Health Secretary Alex Neil said:

"The Scottish Government recognises the issues that have emerged from this survey and that is why we have already taken decisive action in addressing many of these through our £50 million unscheduled care action plan.

"Through this, NHS Boards have introduced local action plans to transform local unscheduled care provision, and we have also released dedicated funding of £1.8 million to support the recruitment of emergency medicine consultants across Scotland.

"We are also working with representatives from a range of stakeholder groups, including health boards, the BMA and Royal Colleges to attract more doctors to train in emergency medicine."

Dr Jason Long Chair of the Scottish Board, of the College of Emergency Medicine said:

"The College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland continues to work with the Scottish Government in improving unscheduled care performance and fully welcomed the recent dedicated funding for more Emergency Medicine consultants. This report outlines some other issues which still need addressed so that we can improve the attractiveness of emergency medicine and look forward to working with Scottish Government in developing initiatives to help."

Notes to editors

The Scottish Government recognise the issues that have emerged from this survey and is already addressing many of the issues raised with its full commitment to improving Unscheduled Care in NHS Scotland by investing £50 million across 3 years in supporting Health Boards to make sustainable improvements for patients and staff across 5 key whole system themes:

In Scotland the number of emergency medicine consultants has increased significantly since 2006. However, our work with the College of Emergency of Medicine in Scotland has recognised that we needed further increases in capacity to deal with the demographic challenges. So this year we have released dedicated funding of £1.8m to support recruitment of Emergency medicine consultants to reduce pressures and improve access to decision support.

Boards are being encouraged to produce workforce plan for delivery of senior decision making across inpatient specialties and emergency care informed by best practice standards and patterns of demand.

Further areas of the report are already being discussed in the Unscheduled Care Expert Group and work is underway to determine the most appropriate models of co-location for NHSScotland, led by a senior ED consultant the implementation principles will be agreed over the next few weeks and shared across all NHS Scotland.

NHS Boards have introduced Local Unscheduled Care Action Plans to transform local unscheduled care provision.

Access to a senior decision maker across key points in the unscheduled care patient journey is being supported by initiatives to improve access to the multi-disciplinary team including nurses, AHPs and support staff.

We recognise the key role that our emergency consultants play in the delivery of care and acknowledge the workforce challenges faced by this specialty in Scotland.

One of the these challenges is attracting doctors to train in Emergency Medicine. START (Strategy for Attracting and Retaining Trainees) is a new NHS Scotland initiative which will provide a coordinated response to the challenges of recruitment of medical trainees.

START comprises representatives from stakeholder groups including Scottish Government, territorial Health Boards, Specialty Training Boards, Royal Colleges, Scottish Medical Schools, BMA & NHS Education for Scotland. It will also include undergraduate and postgraduate trainee representatives and will deliver a new collaborative approach to promoting the range of high quality medical training opportunities that Scotland has to offer in emergency Medicine and other specialties. It’s objectives include reducing vacancies in training programmes which will promote safer delivery of patient care and impact positively on the quality of training of all of our Scottish trainees.

The purpose of the Scottish Government’s 2020 Workforce Vision, launched in June this year is to ensure that the right people are available to deliver the right care, in the right place, at the right time. As part of that we will identify and agree high impact workforce actions to support new, emerging, and sustainable service delivery models in unscheduled care, including Emergency Medicine. We will develop a Scottish Investment Plan for investing in the health care workforce now and in the future.