First Ministers may come and go, but some things from the past few years remain constant – one of them being worries over the state of the NHS.
Earlier this week, Dr Andrew Buist, chair of BMA Scotland’s GP Committee, wrote about the growing difficulties facing Scotland’s GP practices.
Today one of our readers contends that a big part of the problem is down to the policies of the SNP Government.
LAST CHANCE: Enjoy a year of unlimited website access for £20 with our Spring Sale offer
James Quinn of Lanark writes: "Dr Andrew Buist articulates a fact that is obvious to the vast majority of GP patients in Scotland. There is a chronic shortage of GPs.
"The SNP Government’s target of recruiting an additional 800 GPs (from 2017) by 2027 is not on track to be met, a point recently reinforced by Audit Scotland. This will not be resolved until the numbers of medical students accepted from Scottish schools is increased.
"Currently only about 55% of medical students in Scotland have passed through the Scottish education system and consequently pay no university tuition fees. The remaining 45% from the rest of the UK and abroad pay the fees that are essential to subsidise Scottish medical students.
"The universities have been forced by the free tuition policies of the SNP Government to fill their medical school places with fee-paying students from abroad.
"It is essential that this issue is addressed by the next Scottish government. The current Holyrood administration has had 17 years to improve the NHS and the expectation that a new nationalist First Minister dredged from the shallow puddle of SNP talent will resolve any of its problems is wildly optimistic."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel