TheHighlandnew

By Stephen McCabe T

HE NEXT time you

pass your local health centre or hospital, consider this: what if NHS Scotland – your NHS – was

critically ill?

Almost without the public noticing it, under the radar, a contagion has spread

4 August 2015

A consultant, asked what the recruitment and retention situation was like in his hospital, said bluntly: “We’re gubbed.” When we look around, the symptoms are clear to see.

out from Scotland’s remote, rural hinterlands - and now threatens to overwhelm the whole NHS service.

Two issues have merged into a single challenge that poses a genuinely huge risk to our future NHS. They go by the name of “recruitment and retention.”

A consultant, asked what the recruitment and retention situation was like in his hospital, said bluntly: “We’re gubbed.” When we look around, the symptoms are clear to see.

Last month NHS Western Isles was at the centre of a media storm when it was revealed it had paid £19,000 for the services of a consultant psychiatrist for one week’s work.