The Scottish Government

This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007

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Speciality training opportunities

13/12/2006

There will be over 2,000 specialty training opportunities available to doctors in Scotland from August 2007, it was confirmed today.

In addition, GP trainees in Scotland on the new MMC curriculum will be spending more time within a primary care environment.

Today's provisional figures are in addition to specialty posts being filled by doctors who are already in specialty training.

Health Minister Andy Kerr said:

"This represents significant increased investment in doctors' training and I am pleased that we will be able to offer sufficient opportunities to all doctors who wish to continue to train in Scotland.

"Under Modernising Medical Careers, we're moving from a system where people are treated by doctors in training, to one where they're treated by trained doctors.

"There's no doubt that moving to that new system presents challenges, but today's figures show we will provide unprecedented training opportunities for doctors in Scotland."

Chief Medical Officer Dr Harry Burns said:

"I am delighted that we are able to implement enhanced primary care training for GPs. As well as improving the focus and quality of training this will mean 150 new trainee posts in primary care.

"As before, recruitment is competitive and not everyone will be able to have their first choice of specialty or location. The number of vacancies in each specialty and location is ultimately decided by the need of patients and the NHS. This has always been the case.

"The fact is the number of opportunities for entering specialty training are much greater than we would normally see. Doctors in Scotland can be very confident of their chances of a training opportunity."

Provisional data based on the specialties within the Royal Colleges are shown below:

* The remainder are Fixed Term Specialist Training posts which have still to be allocated to specialties.