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Psychology trainee retention

Purpose

The following applies for the data released as part of the Psychology Services Workforce official statistics publication.

Trainee retention data show the number and proportion of graduates from Psychology courses in Scottish universities currently employed within the NHSScotland workforce.

Calculation

Trainee data are extracted from the Turas Programme Management System and filtered according to the following criteria:

  • National Insurance (NI) number is recorded
  • Completion date is neither blank nor ‘non-completed’
  • Course is listed as Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, MSc Psychological Therapy in Primary Care or MSc in Applied Psychology for Children and Young People.

The data are then split into two separate files—DClinPsych graduates and MSc graduates.

NHS workforce information is obtained by searching and extracting current staff from the SWISS database whose NI numbers are present on the trainee extracts.

The extract of DClinPsych graduates is matched to the Swiss extract by NI number and all exact duplicates removed, to avoid double counting of employees with multiple contracts in the same health board. These data are then aggregated by graduation year, course, course alignment (CAMHS, Forensic, Older Adults, No Alignment) and NHS Board. The Dclin extract is then filtered again to remove all duplicated NI numbers, i.e. staff with multiple contracts across separate boards, and the data are again aggregated to obtain information at the NHSScotland level.  

The extract of MSC graduates is first matched to the DClinPsych extract to remove all MSc graduates who are listed as being currently in training for the clinical doctorate. This is done to avoid duplication, as the SWISS extract may show these graduates as being employed in NHSScotland. The MSc extract is then matched to the Swiss extract following the same processes as above for the DClinPsych extract, aggregating by graduation year, course and NHSBoard.

The data are presented as number of graduates currently employed, by graduation year, employing health board and course. They are also presented as retention rates, which are the number of currently employed graduates divided by the number of completing graduates for whom NI numbers are available, by graduation year, health board and course.