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Scottish Health Workforce Plan - 2004 Baseline
Foreword by Malcolm Chisholm MSP, Minister for Health and Community Care
Healthcare staff matter: their expertise, dedication and commitment make the difference in delivering high quality care to people throughout Scotland, every day. If we want to make a real improvement in the delivery of this key public service, we must achieve it with, and through, healthcare staff.
This baseline Workforce Plan developed by the National Workforce Committee, comes at a vitally important time for NHSScotland. It is clear that immediate and formidable challenges face the 147,000 strong workforce. It is equally clear that we need to address these challenges together, working in partnership and working for the longer term.
Some important steps have already been taken to sustain and to grow our workforce. We have taken on over 4,000 extra staff in the last year alone, with increases in every NHS Board in Scotland. This baseline document provides a comprehensive position statement and an analysis of some of the key drivers of change. The new NHS Boards, the regional service and workforce planning networks, and our many other stakeholders will be able to draw on the national picture the Plan provides to inform their own planning processes. In turn, they will inform further development of the National Workforce Plan.
One of the key issues is the way healthcare professional roles are changing and developing. This questions the way we have traditionally thought of the healthcare professions and the boundaries between them. The challenge is to reconceptualise how we think of clinical teams, support people adequately and safely to fulfil new roles, and continue to value the core skills and contributions of individual professions.
While I recognise that much work lies ahead, the scale of the effort thus far will be apparent to all of those reading this baseline Workforce Plan. Its publication in no way marks the culmination of all of this effort. Rather, it heralds the beginning of the next crucial phase of our fully co-ordinated focused drive to increase our capacity and by doing so to reduce waiting times, improve patient outcomes and provide care in new and better ways.
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