Doctors are exhausted, says BMA Scotland chief

Scotland's doctors are "exhausted" and many are cutting working hours or leaving the health service altogether, according to a senior doctors' leader.

BMA Scotland chairman Dr Lewis Morrison told BBC Scotland that doctors were "washed out physically and mentally" after 18 months of the Covid pandemic.

He said action was needed to stop doctors leaving the profession and to boost recruitment of new medics.

The Scottish government said it was working to manage the pressures.

Speaking ahead of the BMA's annual representative meeting, Dr Morrison said the "workforce crisis" had its roots in the number of senior doctor vacancies before the pandemic.

But he said that the NHS "being run at 110% capacity" during Covid had deepened the crisis.

The pressures across the NHS had been "immense" in the past few weeks, he said.

Dr Morrison said doctors traditionally had low levels of sickness but it was starting to rise.

"I think the cumulative effect of the pandemic is now starting to show," he said.

"The main other thing is to look after people, to give people the space to have rest and recuperation as best they can, to not pressurise people to do more and more.

"The message needs to go to the public to still be patient with the NHS because it cannot meet the needs of everybody right now."

Dr Morrison said that in the medium term, over the next few months, efforts must be made to stop staff leaving the NHS.

"There are lots of factors at play that could lead people to make a decision to either retire, or potentially leave for other parts of the world to work, or indeed to reduce the amount of work they do to protect themselves from physical and mental burnout," he said.

"So anything we can do to support the existing medical workforce until we get a clear plan for recruiting and increasing the number of doctors that is going to be how we get through this."

Dr Morrison said the problem was not an issue of "morale".

"This is sheer out-and-out exhaustion we are looking at and that's more worrying," he said.

The Scottish government said the health secretary met BMA representatives earlier this week to hear about the challenges facing doctors.

A spokesperson said: "We are also working proactively with health boards to manage pressures and take rapid action to support increased capacity, including expedited recruitment, flexible deployment of existing staffing and supporting mutual aid across the system.

"Our NHS Recovery Plan commits more than £1bn of targeted investment in Scotland's health service and sets out key actions for the next five years, putting staff at the very heart of our recovery with an increased budget of £8m to provide ongoing support for their mental health and wellbeing.

"This includes targeted support to the primary care and social care workforce of £2m. We have record staffing levels and the best paid staff in UK, recently giving doctors a 3% pay rise."

Supporting the physical and psychological wellbeing of NHS staff was a "fundamental priority", the spokesperson added.