NES collects employment information on the NHS pharmacy workforce, sometimes referred to as the Managed Sector to differentiate it from community pharmacy.
The managed sector pharmacy workforce are directly employed by NHS Scotland and include staff who work within pharmacy services at a hospital, NHS Board, and the Pharmaceutical Special Service.
A survey is sent out to NHS Boards to collect aggregated information on employment, vacancies, locums, posts currently at risk, and disestablished posts.
Employment information for the managed pharmacy workforce are also available in SWISS. They are reported quarterly in the NHS Scotland Workforce official statistics publication under the Pharmacy sub job family (Other Therapeutic Services staff group). However, detail of the discipline (e.g pharmacist, pharmacy support worker etc) is only available in the annual survey.
Data are available annually on 30 September census from 2011.
Staff are included in this survey if they are employed by NHS Scotland on a permanent contract.
Pharmacy leads at each NHS Board are asked to complete the excel-based survey for the workforce position at 30 September each year. The survey collects information for the following disciplines:
Staff on secondments are reported under their NHS Board of employment, rather than board of placement.
Data are collected by division:
Territorial Boards record the level of staffing for each service within their Board, whereas staff at Special Health Boards are recorded under central staff service.
A vacancy is defined as: A post which has been cleared for advert after being through the redeployment process (internal or external advert) and remains a vacancy until an individual starts in the post.
The number of vacancies at the census date are recorded as Whole Time Equivalent depending on the length of vacancy: vacant less than 3 months, vacant for 3 months and more, vacancy length unknown.
For vacancies, additional conditions are applied:
From September 2021, establishment is calculated by employment plus total vacancy (in whole time equivalent). Prior to September 2021, establishment was entered by data providers. There are a small number of cases where the establishment does not equal the sum of employment and total vacancy.
A locum is someone employed on a contractual basis through an agency, rather than having a permanent salaried position.
Disestablished posts are posts are those that are no longer funded as part of the core establishment.
At risk posts are those being considered removed from the core establishment.
Employment per 100,000 population are reported using the Mid-year population estimates: time series data:
Workforce per 10,000 population = (Employment / Population) * 10,000
Mid-year populations are published annually with estimates provided for the previous year. For example, in 2024 the mid-2023 population estimates were published. As a result, any census point published without a corresponding population estimate will be marked as provisional and the latest available population estimate will be used until the correct year has been published. The time series takes into account any revisions or corrections over the year.
Several steps are in place to ensure that these data are reported accurately.
This collection allows NES to report the number of staff employed at a census date. This will be different from the number of staff working at any given time (for example, due to rostering or absences).
It is not possible to use the main administrative system of employment data (SWISS) since the occupational coding structure does not include the occupations in the survey. The use of administrative data would help reduce the burden on survey respondents by supplementing or replacing survey items and is something that NES is investigating.
It is not possible to track the progression of staff or calculate turnover using the survey because the data is aggregated.