NHSScotland Workforce 31 March 2026
Quarter ending 31 March 2026
Accredited Official Statistics
Published: 02 June 2026
About this release
This release by Public Services Delivery (PSD) Scotland provides the quarterly update, as at 31 March 2026. This includes the number of staff directly employed by NHS Scotland and the number of vacant posts there were for nursing and midwifery staff, allied health professions, and medical and dental consultants.
Additionally, this update includes annual updates on the sickness absence, turnover and expenditure on supplementary staffing of doctors and nurses.
When describing the size of a particular staff group figures are presented as headcount (actual number of staff) or whole time equivalent (WTE) which adjusts the headcount to take account of part time working.
Also included, as Official Statistics in development, is a report on the number and specialisms of Clinical Nurse Specialists.
Key Points
Background
Information on staff directly employed is sourced from each NHS Board’s human resources and payroll systems. These are dynamic, operational systems and data can change over time. Work is undertaken with NHS Boards to improve data quality and previously published information may change from one publication to the next to reflect these improvements.
Further Information
A Data Quality Report is available summarising ongoing and historic data quality issues and category and name changes.
We are continually working on ways on making our publications better, details of current developments and improvements can be found on our Future Developments page
Pre-release access to this official statistics release was granted for a period of 5 working days prior to the date set for its publication to those people whose organisations and job titles are listed in the attached document.
The next scheduled quarterly release of this publication will be 1 September 2026.