NHSScotland workforce data to June 2020
Official workforce statistics for the core NHSScotland workforce, psychology services and CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) were released by NES on 1 September 2020.
The publications are available on the NES Turas Data Intelligence platform
Interruptions in data flows caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in reduced vacancy for the 30 June 2020 census date.
The key points from the Official Statistics are outlined below. When describing the size of a particular staff group, figures are presented either as headcount (actual number of staff) or whole time equivalent (WTE) which adjusts the headcount to take account of part-time working.
The NHSScotland Core Workforce
This publication provides a quarterly update for 30 June 2020 on data including the number of staff directly employed by NHSScotland, and the number of vacant posts for nursing and midwifery staff, allied health professions, and medical and dental consultants. Data on the cost of medical agency locums, bank and agency nursing staff and the number of dentists working in Scotland are also available.
- 171,577 staff were employed by NHSScotland, the highest reported to date and a 4.9% annual increase; the whole time equivalent (WTE) has also grown by 5.0% over the same period to 147,309.9 WTE
- 2,966 of these staff joined the NHS workforce through the COVID accelerated recruitment programme; of these 2,423 (81.7%) were nursing students and 515 (17.3%) were final year medical students
- the nursing and midwifery staff group is the largest in NHSScotland, accounting for 63,178.1 WTE (42.4%) of the workforce; it has increased by 3.9% over the past year
- there were 14,297.8 WTE medical and dental staff in post, an annual increase of 0.7%; doctors in training and consultants account for 38.7% (5,527.0) and 29.9% (4,192.8 WTE) of the medical and dental workforce, respectively
- there were 12,196.3 WTE allied health professions in post, an annual increase of 1.1%
CAMHS Workforce, and Psychology Services Workforce
These publications summarise national data on the workforce providing psychology and CAMHS services in NHSScotland, following the latest census on 31 March 2020.
Data include the number and characteristics of clinical staff in post, and the numbers of trainees in doctorate and MSc courses.
- Within psychology services in NHSScotland as at 30 June 2020, there were a total of 1293.2 WTE (1,564 headcount) clinical staff in post; this is the highest WTE and headcount seen within NHSScotland psychology services: 103.8% (658.8 WTE) higher than in September 2006, 9.6% (113.3 WTE) higher than reported 12 months previously and 6.5% (79.1 WTE) higher than the previous quarter.
- Out of the total of 93.8 WTE advertised vacancies, 48.9% (45.9 WTE) had been advertised for less than three months, 31.9% (29.9 WTE) for three to six months and 13.2% (12.4 WTE) for longer than six months. Data on vacancy length were unavailable for 6.0% (5.6 WTE) of advertised posts. The vacancy rate was 6.8%, compared to 8.6% in June 2019. A further 33.8 WTE vacancies were approved but not yet advertised.
- There were 1,080.9 WTE staff in post within NHSScotland CAMHS, an increase of 65.3% since 2006, 8.8% since 31 March 2016, and an increase of 2.7% since 30 June 2019. Of the total staff in post, 4.1% of staff were on maternity leave and 1.9% were on long term sick leave.
- There were 52.2 WTE vacancies of which 59% of vacancies were in Nursing professional group and 23.8% of vacancies were in the Psychology professional group. The WTE of vacancies decreased by 45.9% since June 2019 census and increased by 46.8% since March 2016 census. Of the total vacancies advertised, 68% were advertised for less than 3 months, 21.6% were advertised for 3- 6 months and 10.3% were advertised for more than 6 months.
Contact us
datagroup@nes.scot.nhs.uk
September, 01 2020