In July 2018, the Scottish Government announced a new lead employer model for Resident Doctors (previously known as Doctors in Training) on training programmes. This means that these doctors will continue to move around placements but they will have one employer for the duration of their training programme. The change in employment model came into force on 1 August 2018.
Four NHS Boards act as the lead employer:
Dentists in Training were added to the lead employer model in September 2021 and Vocational Dental Practitioners (VDPs) were added in August 2022.
Turas Training Programme Management (TPM) holds information on trainees, trainers and programmes for several staff groups, such as medical, dental, pharmacy, psychology, healthcare science, and optometry.
Turas People was created to support implementation of the lead employer arrangements across Scotland by enabling information to be easily shared across systems and users.
Data from Turas TPM flows to Turas People and pre-populates records of medical and dental trainees and details of their training programme. NHS Boards and trainees are then able to update employment details and manage contracts throughout placements through Turas People.
Some data in Turas People are more accurate and up-to-date when compared with SWISS. Importantly, after the lead employer model implementation the NHS Board variable in SWISS records Employment Board instead of Placement Board.
A snapshot of the Turas People database is extracted on the first day of the month for Resident doctors, Dentists in Training and VDPs employed on the last day of the month before. This extract is merged with data from SWISS and loaded into the NES data warehouse. There is no common identifier that is complete in both data sources. We therefore merge these data using either Pay Number or a combination of National Staff Id (a unique id within SWISS), National Insurance Number, Date of Birth, and Surname.
The variables taken from Turas People are: NHS Board (Placement Board); Specialty; Grade; Age; and Sex. If we are unable to find a Resident doctor, Dentists in Training or VDP in Turas People, then the variables from SWISS are used.
By merging SWISS and Turas People we continue to report by Placement Board.
Employment data for Resident doctors from Turas People was first used in the NHS Scotland Workforce Official Statistics publication released in December 2018 (30 September 2018 census). Dentists in Training data from Turas People followed in 31 December 2021 (30 September 2021 census). We report the number of Resident doctors and Dentists in Training employed by NHS Scotland by location (NHS Board), medical and dental specialty, medical grade, contract type and demographic (sex, age group, median age) indicators.
From 30 September 2022, VDPs are reported for the first time in the main Employment section of the Dashboard, under NHS Education for Scotland (Employer Board), community dentistry specialty, and other grade. VPDs are also reported on the Dentist tab updated in June and December.
The data for TPM is entered by trainers, trainees and staff administering the NHS Boards. Data is of high quality.
Each load of the merged Turas People and SWISS data are manually reviewed to identify any issues. There are a small number of resident doctors in Turas People that cannot be matched to a record in SWISS. This is likely explained by records not being updated, in either SWISS, TPM or Turas People, in time for the extract.
Resident doctors and Dentists in Training are included in our quality assurance processes.