NATIONAL PRIMARY CARE WORKFORCE SURVEY ADVISORY GROUP REPORT ON 2013 SURVEY - WEB ONLY

Background

8. The National Primary Care Workforce Survey is an important data source, informing workforce planning at Community Health Partnership, Health Board, Regional Workforce Group and Scottish levels. It is designed to capture data on health professional practice staff and health care support staff in all GP practices in Scotland.

2009 Survey

9. Last run in 2009, it was designed to capture aggregate information including sessional commitments of GPs; headcount and Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) numbers of practice nurses and healthcare assistants/phlebotomists; use of locum GP time; use of extra nurse time; and known vacancies for these professional groups at a fixed census date. The results, based on data supplied by general practices who participated in the Survey, were published in December 2009.

10. Although the results contained a mixture of incomplete and estimated figures, a number of estimates were calculated, including:

• Individual GPs in post delivered, on average, 7.2 sessions per week in their practice or in their professional capacity elsewhere (excluding any time spent in Out of Hours service provision).
• The total WTE number of GPs (excluding registrars) working in Scottish general practices, based on an assumption of 8 or more sessions per week being a full time commitment, was 3,700.
• Locum/sessional GPs collectively provided a total of roughly 255 WTE across all Scottish general practices during the period February 2008 to January 2009.
• Headcount and WTE numbers of practice-employed practice nurses in Scotland were 2,140 and 1,415 respectively. These figures excluded nurses employed by Boards to fulfil practice nurse roles in independent contractor practices (i.e. regular partnerships). This means that these figures do not reflect the entire practice nurse workforce in Scotland.
• An assumed full time commitment (37 or more hours per week) was recorded for 15.5% of practice-employed practice nurses. A further 59% worked at least half-time, whilst 26% were contracted to work on a less than half time basis.

11. The 2009 Survey results were published on the ISD website and are available at http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/General-Practice/GPs-and-Other-Practice-Workforce/national-primary-care-workforce-survey-2009.asp .