An army of 2000 Scots GPs is required to plug massive gaps in local surgeries across Scotland, according to one of the country’s most senior doctors.

Iain Kennedy, chair of BMA Scotland, said there were also massive hospital consultant vacancies – with roughly three in every 20 positions unfilled.

When you add in more than 6400 nursing and midwifery vacancies and catastrophic vacancies in social care, an emerging picture forms of why the NHS is on its knees.

Speaking to the Daily Record as part of our NHS SOS series, Dr Kennedy, a Highland GP, admitted: “The workforce crisis in NHS Scotland, and indeed in social care, is my biggest concern. We know that GP practices are falling over in Scotland. Good numbers of practices are at the point of collapse and GP ­partners are considering handing their contracts back to the health board.

“Because of a lack of GPs the existing practices are fighting over an ever-dwindling pool. It is really a dog eat dog situation where practice survival is where we are at.”

The Scottish Government has a target of 800 more GPs by 2027 but Kennedy believes “we are well short of that target”.

And he stated: “My view is given the increased demands on the health service due to the ageing population and the fact we are dealing with far more complex patients, and because GPs are managing patients who are languishing on the waiting lists, I believe that the true figure is probably nearer 2000 GPs short in Scotland.”

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