Supporting a strong NHS workforce

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the staff who work in our NHS. Day in and day out, doctors, nurses and support staff deliver world class care for patients in Scotland.

Here’s how we’re working to maintain a strong NHS workforce.

• The number of staff working in our NHS is at historic levels. There are now almost 12,900 more NHS staff since the SNP came to office, including more doctors, qualified nurses and midwives.
• NHS Scotland Agenda for Change staff will be receive at least a 9 per cent pay rise over the next three years – the highest offer in the UK. Employees currently earning up to £80,000 will receive a minimum cumulative uplift of at least 9 per cent, and those earning £80,000 and over will receive a flat rate increase of £1,600 a year.

By 2020-21, Scottish staff will be significantly better paid than NHS staff anywhere else in the UK. Relative to staff in England:

• Pay for a porter at the top of Band 2 will be over £1,200 more
• Pay for a healthcare assistant at the top of Band 3 will be over £1,450 more
• Pay for a healthcare support worker at the top of Band 4 will be over £800 more
• Pay for a ward nurse at the top of Band 5 will be over £1,030 more
• Pay for a paramedic at the top of Band 6 will be nearly £1,280 more
• Pay for an advanced nurse practitioner at the top of Band 7 will be over £1,500 more

• We will increase GP numbers by 800 over the next decade. We’ve introduced a new GP contract to make the profession a more attractive career prospect and we’ve increased training places to 400 a year.

• We are creating 85 new medical school places in innovative new courses to encourage students to consider General Practice as a long term career. The undergraduate courses will be taught at Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities.

• We are protecting the non-means tested, non-repayable nursing and midwifery student bursary – as well as maintaining free university tuition. Both have been scrapped by the UK Government for nursing and midwifery students in England.

• By 2021 we will increase the number of nursing and midwifery training places by 2,600 to a record high of 12,000. This year the number of student nurses and midwives entering education will increase for the sixth year in a row.

• We’re recruiting an additional 1,000 paramedics over the course of this Parliament.
• We have published a Safe Staffing Bill. This will put a legal duty on health boards to ensure that suitable staffing is in place to enable all patients to receive safe, high quality care.
• Nurses in Scotland are better paid than anywhere else in the UK. A nurse in Scotland, at Band 5, is paid up to £312 more than their English counterparts.