Future Medical Workforce Project Annex C: Technical assumptions and approach

Limitations and further work

NES required to reduce the scope of the modelling that could be delivered within the time frame. In particular,

1. It was not possible to connect completion of Foundation and intake to Specialty training (e.g. Model 1 and Model 2). This means that all employment estimates are derived from model 2 only and do not consider undergraduate or foundation training.

2. All trainees who complete a non-GMP training specialty are assumed to enter the consultant workforce in Scotland immediately. Further work to link trainee and employment data is required to estimate this transition.

3. The model is limited to trainees on specialty training programmes, and consultant and GMP doctors. It should be expanded to include core training and other medical grades, such as SAS.

4. The methods used here may differ slightly from those used to produce other statistics published by NES, for example the new Official Statistics in Development (OSiD) on postgraduate medical training. This is due to the refinement of methods that happened during the OSiD process. The impact on the figures is minimal.

5. Further work is needed to explore the relationship between less than full time working and the completion probabilities.

In addition, there is the limitation that the GP workforce does not include those working only in out of hours or as locums due to lack of data.