| HealthBoard | Response rate |
|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 92.6% |
| NHS Borders | 81.8% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 84.4% |
| NHS Fife | 80.8% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 85.7% |
| NHS Grampian | 85.5% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 83.6% |
| NHS Highland | 83.5% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 80.0% |
| NHS Lothian | 92.2% |
| NHS Orkney | 85.7% |
| NHS Shetland | 55.6% |
| NHS Tayside | 81.7% |
| NHS Western Isles | 88.9% |
| Scotland | 84.6% |
General Practice Workforce Survey 2024
Official statistics in Development
This report is published as Official Statistics in Development. Official statistics in development are official statistics that are undergoing a development; they may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
1 Executive Summary
As at 31 March 2024:
GP whole time equivalent (WTE) (excluding Specialist Trainees) continued to decrease, from 3,478.4 at 31 March 2023 to 3,453.1 at 31 March 2024, a decrease of 0.7%.
The whole time equivalent of nurses in General Practice increased by 0.5% to 1,710.3 WTE.
The total WTE in Other Direct Clinical Care occupations has decreased slightly between the 2023 and 2024 survey to 503.1WTE.
There were just over 9,000 administrative and non-clinical staff, with receptionists making up 62% of the total headcount.
The GP vacancy rate has decreased from 10.9% at 31 March 2023 to 7.6% at 31 March 2024. The nursing vacancy rate has decreased from 10.7% at 31 March 2023 to 4.1% at 31 March 2024.
In the year ending 31 March 2024:
The number of GP sessions lost to sickness absence was around 5,500 (15%) higher than in 2022/23. The number of hours lost to sickness for non-doctor staff was around 35,000 (7%) higher than in 2022/23.
GP practices in Scotland reported using 348.2 WTE Locums, a slight rise on the previous year.
The number of practices using locums has remained stable. Most NHS Boards saw an increase in the percent of required locum sessions that were filled.
2 Introduction
This release by NHS Education for Scotland provides information on numbers of General Practitioners (GPs), Nurses and other General Practice staff in Scotland on 31 March 2024. Vacancies, Absences and use of GP locum staff during the year ending 31 March 2024 are also reported.
The General Practice workforce survey was last carried out in 2023. Surveys prior to 2023 were published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) and can be found on PHS’s website.
Public Health Scotland (PHS) also publish information on contact details for GP Practices, GPs and List sizes.
NES publish bi-annual data on the headcount of GPs within the NHS Scotland Workforce statistics. This uses the census dates of 31 March and 30 September each year, and also contains information on the number of GP Trainees, which are excluded from this report. Numbers of GPs vary seasonally, with numbers typically higher in September than March.
NES also produces the results of the OOH Primary Care survey. GPs working in Primary Care may work across the two services.
Background information, including an overview of the data sources used and a glossary can be found on our website. Links to other reports on the Primary Care workforce from across the UK can also be found there.
This report is accompanied by a series of data tables providing users with additional detail on the data collected in 2024 and 2023.
3 Methods
3.1 Survey data collection
The survey was run by NHS National Services Scotland and sent out to all GP Practices in Scotland. In previous years, an excel spreadsheet based survey was used. Both these methods faced technical issues and so a new a Microsoft Teams app was built to collect the data.
These changes in system may affect data reported here.
Practices are asked to complete four sections on their staff for the year ending 31 March 2024:
a list of staff who are employed by their practice,
a list of vacancies in their practice,
the total number of absent sessions (for GPs) or hours for all other staff during the year
The number of locum sessions that their practice required and how many of them were filled
Performer Registrars (medical practitioners in a GP training program) and staff who only work on a locum basis were excluded from the analysis of the data collected by the survey.
3.2 Sample data weighting
The response rate was less than 100% so appropriate weighting has been applied to provide representative estimates at NHS Board and national levels.
Apart from GP Headcounts, which have been calculated from the National Primary Care Clinicians Database, all statistics presented here have been calculated using weighted estimates. In survey reports before 2022 weights may not have been applied to some statistics, with figures reported based on the survey sample data alone. Previous survey reports will be clear where weighted estimates have and have not been used.
Table 1 describes the different weightings used for each measure in this report.
| Staff Group | Measure | Weighting Used |
|---|---|---|
| General Practitioners | WTE | GP headcounts* |
| Contracted sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Vacant sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Locum sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Absent sessions | GP headcounts* | |
| Practices using locums | Practice response rates per board | |
| Practices with vacancies | Practice response rates per board | |
| All Other Staff | WTE | Practice list sizes per board |
| Contracted hours | Practice list sizes per board | |
| Vacant hours | Practice list sizes per board | |
| Absent hours | Practice list sizes per board | |
| Practices with vacancies | Practice response rates per board |
*GP headcounts in combinations of Board, designation, age group and sex
3.3 Imputing missing data
We have also addressed missing data using data imputation methods. Missing data on contracted and vacant hours, contracted GP sessions, and staff age have been imputed using a donor-based imputation that relies only on this year’s survey sample data for replacement values, and preserves existing relationships and distribution present in the sample data. These methods help to provide a more complete data set for analysis.
3.4 NPCCD
The GP headcount are sourced from the National Primary Care Clinicians Database (NPCCD).
As NPCCD is a live administrative database, with data being updated over time, some caution is advised in using these year-on-year comparisons. Although the published historic headcount time series in the NHS Scotland dashboard is updated when a new census date is available, the headcount presented here is not, this may cause some small differences between the two sets of data.
4 Results
4.1 Response rates
The overall response rate for the survey was 84.6%, with data submitted from 754 practices. Table 2 presents the response rate for each NHS Board and is based on the number of practices eligible to respond to the survey in March 2024. This is an improvement on the previous year’s response, 80.7%.
4.2 Primary Care Workforce
The Primary Care survey asks about several different staff groups, General Practitioners, Nurses, Other Direct clinical and Admin and Clerical.
General Practitioners WTE is defined as 8 contracted sessions per week and for all other staff WTE is 37 hours per week.
4.2.1 General Practitioners
There were 4,438 General Practitioners (GPs) on 31 March 2024, equivalent to 3,453.1 WTE (Table 3).
| HealthBoard | Headcount | WTE | Average WTE | WTE per 10,000 patients | Headcount per 10,000 patients |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 295 | 235.8 | 0.8 | 6.0 | 7.6 |
| NHS Borders | 103 | 80.0 | 0.8 | 6.6 | 8.5 |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 104 | 87.9 | 0.8 | 5.6 | 6.6 |
| NHS Fife | 277 | 213.4 | 0.8 | 5.4 | 7.0 |
| NHS Forth Valley | 234 | 174.4 | 0.7 | 5.3 | 7.1 |
| NHS Grampian | 444 | 340.0 | 0.8 | 5.5 | 7.2 |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 935 | 739.3 | 0.8 | 5.4 | 6.8 |
| NHS Highland | 368 | 299.7 | 0.8 | 8.8 | 10.9 |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 367 | 298.4 | 0.8 | 4.2 | 5.2 |
| NHS Lothian | 883 | 648.8 | 0.7 | 6.2 | 8.5 |
| NHS Orkney | 44 | 30.9 | 0.7 | 13.9 | 19.7 |
| NHS Shetland | 26 | 10.4 | 0.4 | 4.5 | 11.4 |
| NHS Tayside | 358 | 272.4 | 0.8 | 6.1 | 8.0 |
| NHS Western Isles | 30 | 21.7 | 0.7 | 8.0 | 11.1 |
| Scotland | 4,438 | 3,453.1 | 0.8 | 5.8 | 7.4 |
1. Doctors may work in more than one board, so the national total may not equal the sum of the Board totals.
GPs over time
Between 31 March 2023 and 31 March 2024, GP WTE decreased by 0.7%.
Since the first survey in 2013 GP Headcount has increased slightly (1.0%) and estimated WTE has decreased by 6.0%. (Figure 1 and Table 4)
GPs by designation
GPs are collectively termed ‘Performers’. These can be broken down into further sub-categories or designations.
The largest designation by both headcount and WTE was Performer GPs; this group also had the highest average WTE (Table 5).
1. Doctors may have more than one designation, so the national headcount may not equal the sum of the designation totals.
4.2.2 Nurses
There were 2,447 nurses in post in GP practices on 31 March 2024, equivalent to 1,710.3 WTE (Table 6).
| HealthBoard | Headcount | WTE |
|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 157 | 116.8 |
| NHS Borders | 64 | 46.3 |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 98 | 66.6 |
| NHS Fife | 179 | 127.6 |
| NHS Forth Valley | 114 | 76.5 |
| NHS Grampian | 356 | 244.7 |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 392 | 265.9 |
| NHS Highland | 203 | 133.1 |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 257 | 199.1 |
| NHS Lothian | 354 | 247.7 |
| NHS Orkney | 27 | 18.9 |
| NHS Shetland | 33 | 13.3 |
| NHS Tayside | 187 | 134.7 |
| NHS Western Isles | 24 | 18.9 |
| Scotland | 2,447 | 1,710.3 |
1. Nurses may work across different Health Boards, so the Scotland headcount may differ from the sum of Board headcounts.
Nurses over time
There was a 0.4% increase in nurse headcount and a 0.5% increase in WTE since the 2023 survey (Figure 2 and Table 7).
Designation
Data was collected on several different nursing roles.
The largest group was General Practice Nurses who accounted for 62% of the total headcount and 59% of the total WTE. The next largest group was Advanced Nurse Practitioners, accounting for for 28% of the total headcount and 33% of the total WTE (Figure 3).
Mean WTE
There was some variation in the average WTE among nursing designations (Figure 4). ANPs had an average WTE of 0.8 whereas General Practice Nurses had an average WTE of 0.7
4.2.3 Other Direct Clinical Care occupations
In addition to GPs and nurses, are a wide range of other clinical roles that make up the multi-disciplinary team within Primary Care (Table 8).
The most common role in this group were Health Care Assistants, 277.4WTE (437 headcount) The next most common groups were Pharmacists, Pharmacy Dispensers and Phlebotomists, with around 55WTE in each role across Scotland.
The total WTE has decreased slightly between the 2023 and 2024 survey to 503.1WTE.
| Staff role | Headcount | WTE | AverageWTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 781 | 503.1 | 0.7 |
| Health Care Assistant | 437 | 277.4 | 0.7 |
| Pharmacist | 88 | 57.8 | 0.8 |
| Dispenser | 83 | 57.6 | 0.8 |
| Phlebotomist | 77 | 42.1 | 0.6 |
| Other Clinical Role | 37 | 26.9 | 0.9 |
| Paramedic | 22 | 20.7 | 1.0 |
| Physician Associate | 19 | 15.7 | 0.9 |
| Therapist (including Counsellor) | 10 | 2.9 | 0.3 |
| Physiotherapist | 7 | 2.1 | 0.3 |
4.2.4 Administrative and Non-Clinical Staff
There were just over 9,000 administrative and non-clinical staff employed in Primary Care, with Receptionists making up 62% of the total headcount.
| Staff role | Headcount | WTE |
|---|---|---|
| Receptionist | 5,610 | 4,122.3 |
| Practice Manager / Manager | 1,181 | 1,040.1 |
| Other | 977 | 658.3 |
| Medical Secretary | 707 | 544.2 |
| Other / Combined role | 334 | 269.4 |
| Estates and Ancillary | 177 | 55.7 |
| Apprentice | 31 | 28.5 |
| Telephonist | 20 | 14.0 |
| Management Partner | 18 | 15.8 |
| Total | 9,055 | 6,748.4 |
4.3 Demographics
Labour market outcomes may depend on the age and sex of the workforce. For example, outflows from the workforce and mean WTE may be related to age and sex.
This can then be used to feed into plans for the number of trainees required. This is particularly useful in the two largest groups within Primary Care, General Practitioners who take a minimum of 6 years at medical school and 5 years of post graduate training, and Nurses who take a minimum of 3 years at university.
4.3.1 General Practitioners
There were more female GPs than male in every age group under 60 and the difference between headcount and estimated WTE was larger for females in every age group under 60. (Figure 7)
This pattern was also seen in the surveys in 2022 and 2023.
4.3.2 Nurses
Among Advanced Nurse Practitioners, the largest headcount is in the 50-54 age group. Among all other nursing roles, the largest headcount is in the 55-59 age group (Figure 8).
4.4 Absences
Sickness absence can result in cancelled appointments and procedures and lead to increased spend on locums and temporary staff.
4.4.1 Data quality
The number of sessions and hours lost to absences reported in this year’s survey are much higher than last year, particularly for non-sickness reasons (Maternity/Paternity, Parental and Special). Due to the way the data is recorded at an aggregate level, it is not possible to determine the reasons behind this rise, and whether it is due to changes in recording.
4.4.2 General practitioners
Sessions lost to sick leave have increased by (Table 10). Reported Maternity and Paternity absence increased by and reported absences due to Parental Leave increasing from 500 sessions to 1,912.
4.4.3 All Other staff
Total aggregated absent hours were also collected for Non-doctors.
Hours lost to sick leave increased by 7.0% (Table 10). Reported Maternity and Paternity absence increased by 38.6%.
The rise in the number of hours lost to sickness, seems to be mainly due to a large rise in the number of hours lost reported in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde.
4.5 Vacancies
Vacancy rates help us to understand labour demand and supply in Primary Care.
In this report GP vacancy rate is defined as:
where
Vacant GP sessions in the year is the sum of the weekly sessions of all vacant GP posts at 31 March of each year
Sessions of GPs in post is the sum of the weekly sessions of all GPs in post on 31st March of each year
For nursing and other staff groups vacancy rates we have used WTE instead of sessions.
4.5.1 Data quality
Vacancy figures have been revised for 2023, using a new methodology, instead of using the number of vacancies across the year, the vacancy rate is calculated using the number of vacancies at 31st March for each year. This is the same definition as used in NES’s workforce statistics.
Vacancy fill dates were inconsistently completed given the vacancy status. Extra caution is therefore advised when referring to the vacancy rates published here.
NES will continue to work with users and suppliers of these GP workforce statistics to further develop the data collection and analysis. This is in line with the development of this publication towards Official Statistics status.
4.5.2 General Practitioners
The vacancy rate has decreased from 10.9% at 31 March 2023 to 7.6% at 31 March 2024.
Some of the smaller and island boards had reported very high vacancy rates last year. These have fallen to rates similar to those elsewhere in Scotland.
| HealthBoard | Year | % of practices with vacancies | Vacant GP sessions | Contracted GP sessions | Vacancy rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 2024 | 22.2% | 200.7 | 1,886.6 | 9.6% |
| NHS Borders | 2024 | 18.2% | 28.5 | 640.2 | 4.3% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 2024 | 40.6% | 100.4 | 703.3 | 12.5% |
| NHS Fife | 2024 | 28.8% | 117.1 | 1,706.9 | 6.4% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 2024 | 4.1% | 20.5 | 1,395.2 | 1.5% |
| NHS Grampian | 2024 | 39.1% | 397.9 | 2,720.3 | 12.8% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 2024 | 14.2% | 423.3 | 5,914.7 | 6.7% |
| NHS Highland | 2024 | 14.3% | 79.9 | 2,397.2 | 3.2% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 2024 | 26.3% | 396.9 | 2,387.4 | 14.3% |
| NHS Lothian | 2024 | 20.7% | 252.4 | 5,190.0 | 4.6% |
| NHS Orkney | 2024 | 28.6% | 11.0 | 247.2 | 4.3% |
| NHS Shetland | 2024 | 83.0 | |||
| NHS Tayside | 2024 | 38.3% | 214.4 | 2,179.4 | 9.0% |
| NHS Western Isles | 2024 | 55.6% | 65.7 | 173.5 | 27.5% |
| Scotland | 2024 | 22.1% | 2273.8 | 27,625.1 | 7.6% |
1. Board and Scotland totals have been calculated separately, so the Scotland headcount may differ from the sum of Board headcounts.
4.5.3 Nurses
There were an estimated 2,720.1 vacant hours on the 31 March 2024, with a national vacancy rate of 4.1% (Table 13). This is a large fall from last year in the vacancy rate in 2023, 10.7%. This reduction was seen in all NHS Boards.
| HealthBoard | % of practices with vacancies | Vacant hours | Contracted hours | Vacancy rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 14.8% | 259.7 | 4,323.6 | 5.7% |
| NHS Borders | 4.5% | 38.3 | 1,712.0 | 2.2% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 3.1% | 41.9 | 2,465.7 | 1.7% |
| NHS Fife | 13.5% | 250.3 | 4,722.4 | 5.0% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 4.1% | 61.8 | 2,832.1 | 2.1% |
| NHS Grampian | 11.6% | 261.3 | 9,053.5 | 2.8% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 11.1% | 899.1 | 9,839.6 | 8.4% |
| NHS Highland | 12.1% | 204.7 | 4,924.3 | 4.0% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 10.5% | 129.7 | 7,365.6 | 1.7% |
| NHS Lothian | 6.0% | 334.4 | 9,166.3 | 3.5% |
| NHS Orkney | 698.0 | |||
| NHS Shetland | 492.6 | |||
| NHS Tayside | 10.0% | 232.5 | 4,984.4 | 4.5% |
| NHS Western Isles | 699.4 | |||
| Scotland | 9.7% | 2,720.1 | 63,299.3 | 4.1% |
1. Board and Scotland totals have been calculated separately, so the Scotland headcount may differ from the sum of Board headcounts.
4.5.4 Other Direct Clinical Care occupations
Vacancy rate for Healthcare Assistants and Phlebotomists have both fallen, whereas the vacancy rate for Dispensers and Pharmacists has risen.
| MainStaffRole | % of practices with vacancies | Vacant hours | Contracted hours | Vacancy rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health Care Assistant | 1.3% | 248.1 | 10,252.3 | 2.4 |
| Dispenser | 0.6% | 100.6 | 2,160.5 | 4.5 |
| Pharmacist | 0.6% | 165.2 | 2,133.6 | 7.2 |
| Phlebotomist | 0.1% | 32.0 | 1,586.2 | 2.0 |
| Other Clinical Role | 917.6 | |||
| Paramedic | 0.2% | 85.8 | 783.2 | 9.9 |
| Physician Associate | 580.3 | |||
| Therapist (including Counsellor) | 107.5 | |||
| Physiotherapist | 76.9 |
4.6 Use of locum/sessional GP time
Locum GPs are doctors who provide cover for the absence of permanent staff due to maternity and paternity leave, sick leave, annual leave or vacancies.
The overall percentage of practices reporting locum use was 85%, very similar to the last two surveys (86%). The total number of WTE locums required was 390 and the total number of WTE locum requirements filled was 348.
There was a decrease of 24.9WTE on the total locum WTE required, with the filled WTE of GPs remaining steady between the 2023 and 2024 surveys. Not all boards reported a decrease (Table 15).
| HealthBoard | Practices using locums | WTE locums required | WTE locums filled | Percent Locum Filled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 79.2% | 20.5 | 18.1 | 88.2% |
| NHS Borders | 93.8% | 13.1 | 12.0 | 92.2% |
| NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 91.7% | 17.5 | 14.8 | 84.8% |
| NHS Fife | 79.5% | 23.1 | 18.4 | 79.7% |
| NHS Forth Valley | 77.5% | 8.0 | 7.0 | 87.0% |
| NHS Grampian | 80.0% | 34.7 | 29.9 | 86.1% |
| NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 85.6% | 89.3 | 82.5 | 92.5% |
| NHS Highland | 82.8% | 29.2 | 26.5 | 90.9% |
| NHS Lanarkshire | 86.5% | 61.4 | 57.3 | 93.3% |
| NHS Lothian | 88.8% | 62.6 | 55.7 | 89.0% |
| NHS Orkney | 83.3% | 1.7 | 1.3 | 80.8% |
| NHS Shetland | 80.0% | 12.5 | 9.9 | 79.2% |
| NHS Tayside | 89.4% | 21.8 | 18.0 | 82.4% |
| NHS Western Isles | 66.7% | 6.2 | 6.2 | 99.2% |
| Scotland | 84.6% | 390.1 | 348.2 | 89.3% |
Most NHS Boards saw an increase in the percent of Locum sessions that were filled (Figure 14).
5 Appendices
5.1 Appendix 1: Official statistics information
As a provider, we adhere to the Code of Practice for Statistics and are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation. You can find more information on the Code of Practice, our protocols for Early and Pre-release Access to our publications, reports on events impacting our publications, our publication timetable.
5.1.1 Pre-release access to official statistics
Under terms of the “Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008”, NES is obliged to publish information on those receiving Pre-Release Access (“Pre-Release Access” refers to statistics in their final form prior to publication). The standard maximum Pre-Release Access is five working days.
Named individuals in the following organisations are approved to receive standard Pre-Release Access:
- Scottish Government Primary Care Directorate
- NHS Board Chief Executives
- NHS Board Communication leads