Future Medical Workforce Project: phase 1 report

12 Dec 2025 11:48 AM

The future medical workforce phase 1 report follows an extensive exploratory process to understand the challenges and opportunities for Scotland’s medical workforce as we look ahead to the next 15 to 20 years.

Introduction

The Future Medical Workforce in Scotland project was launched in May 2025. The project seeks to understand the needs of the future medical workforce and to ensure that we can deliver a workforce with the right skills and expertise to provide for the healthcare needs of the future Scottish population (15-20 years’ time). The project aims to listen to diverse perspectives, be a collective & shared endeavour and ultimately support a cultural shift to enable change and reform.

The scope of this project is limited to understanding the requirements of the future medical workforce, based on a view of future service delivery and demand and understanding the policies and approaches required to supply that workforce. The scope does not include identifying changes to current pay and terms and conditions for the medical workforce.

The work has been guided by Scotland’s National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care to explore the themes of:

• Planning – understanding drivers of demand and developing supply models to improve national workforce planning.
• Attraction and Training – understanding required improvements to medical training to enable flexible career pathways.
• Recruitment and Nurture – ensuring that NHS Scotland can attract and retain medical staff and create positive cultures for people to thrive.

Following the Scottish Approach to Service Design – the project has been split into two phases:

Phase 1 (May – November 2025): Discovery – Dialogue and Data

• Workstream 1 – Workforce dialogue to build understanding of workforce views on current issues and future opportunities. This has been taken forward through focus groups and survey
• Workstream 2 – Supply pipeline scenario modelling – understanding the possible shape and size of the future medical workforce. Modelling provided by NHS Education for Scotland.

This report is the culmination of Phase 1 and sets out the findings from this discovery phase.

Phase 2 will begin in January 2026 and will focus on working in partnership to design solutions to the issues identified within this report.

The project’s first phase has included:

• Issuing of a call for evidence on the potential of innovation and technology in August 2025 inviting contributions from Health & Social Care professionals, Academic Institutions, Innovation Networks and Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties. (Summary of findings in Annex A)
• Review of existing evidence of view of patients and the public on NHS reform and delivery of services. (Summary in Annex A)
• Workforce engagement: conducting focus groups in-person and online with doctors across Scotland, and issuing a sense-making survey to all doctors in Scotland. (Details on this methodology and analysis can be found in Annex B.
• Working with NES to develop and consider scenarios under the supply pipeline modelling. (More details in Annex C)
• A series of ‘sector leaders’ roundtables on the themes of Demand, Supply and Workforce views.

A dedicated research advisory group consisting of representatives from NHS Education for Scotland (NES), the General Medical Council (GMC), the Scottish Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, medical schools, and senior clinical NHS leaders has guided the project approach to workforce engagement. This group supported the development of 4 core research questions.

• What is the role of a doctor?
• How will the role of a doctor need to evolve to meet population needs in 15 years’ time?
• What does a modern medical workforce need to sustain fulfilling careers?
• How do we improve workforce planning to best serve the public and delivery of high quality care?

Responses provided by doctors to these questions form the main chapters of this report.

Doctors across Scotland were invited to participate in focus groups designed to explore the research questions. 40 focus group were held over August and September across all territorial health boards in Scotland, offering the opportunity to either participate online or in person. The discussions were recorded and, utilising qualitative research methodology, Scottish Government facilitators used a semi-structured script to explore the core research questions with each group. All transcripts were anonymised and coded using a thematic analytic approach to explore and develop the core themes for each research question. The full methodology is detailed in Annex B.

207 doctors and medical students attended the focus groups with representatives from all grades and boards. Further detail of attendees is provided on page 9. A number of focus groups were offered only to resident doctors to ensure that potential hierarchical dynamics were avoided in the group setting. Four focus groups were only offered to university medical programme students. In addition to territorial health boards, groups were offered to national boards and an invitation to participate was also issued to representative bodies including the General Medical Council (GMC), British Medical Association (BMA), NES, Scottish Association of Medical Directors, Scottish Directors of Medical Education and to members of the Scottish Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

A national online survey was issued and was open for 4 weeks, to allow all doctors to be able to share their view. This was designed to check that views being expressed within the focus groups were representative of the views of the workforce as a whole. There were 1817 doctors who responded to the survey as outlined on page 9.

Throughout this report we have included insights and views from this engagement. Survey results confirmed the views of those who participated in focus groups and where there is divergence or additional insight this is noted. In summarising the results of the focus groups and survey below, the term senior doctors is used to refer to GPs, Consultants and Specialty, Associate Specialist and Specialist doctors.

Future Medical Workforce engagement

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