Statistics on General Practitioners currently registered in Scotland: FOI release

Information requested

1) How many General Practioners are currently (as at October 2021) registered as practising in Scotland?

2) How many of those currently registered declare themselves as working "full time" hours?

3) How many of those currently registered declare themselves as working "part time" hours?

4) Of those working "part time", what percentage of total "full time" hours are they declaring themselves as working? (i.e for example, if 100 doctors are working part time for a total of 2,000 hours between them (average of 20 hours per week each) and the "normal" full time week is 40 hours each (a total of 4,000 hours), then the percentage would be 50%.

Response

Part 1

According to the latest Public Health Scotland data, which was published 26 January 2021, as at 30 September 2020 there are 5,134 General Practitioners registered as practising in Scotland. 

These figures exclude GPs working only on a locum/sessional basis and those working only in Out of Hours service locations, and also exclude NHS Board administration practices which have no registered GPs or registered patients.

The data can be found here: General Practice - GP Workforce and practice list sizes 2010 - 2020 - General Practice - GP workforce and practice list sizes - Publications - Public Health Scotland

This will be updated to include data for 30 September 2021 in December. Note that this series relates to headcounts, and does not cover hours or sessions worked.

Parts 2, 3 and 4
The General Practice Workforce Survey 2019, published by Public Health Scotland on 26 October 2021 provides information on estimated whole time equivalent (WTE) and sessions per week of GPs in Scotland up to 2019, broken down by age and sex, GP designation and NHS board.

One WTE is defined in this report as eight weekly contracted GP sessions.

The estimated GP WTE is 3,613 as at 2019. This figure excludes Specialist Trainees.

You can view The General Practice Workforce Survey 2019 and accompanying data dashboard here: General practice workforce survey 2019 - General practice workforce survey - Publications - Public Health Scotland

An extract taken from the dashboard is shown below. Please note that these percentages are based on those practices that responded to the Survey.

		Number of GPs in Responding Practices (%)
Number of Sessions (per week)	Performer	Performer Retainee	Performer Salaried	Total
Up to 4	8	100	34	13
5 to 7	52		54	51
8 or more	41		12	35
TOTAL (%)	100	100	100	100

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.