Page last updated: 22-DEC-2009

NHSScotland Workforce Information

Psychology Workforce Planning Project

The need for reliable and up-to-date intelligence, both about psychology service requirements and the changing skill-mix in psychology services is essential to workforce planning.

The Psychology Workforce Planning Project was initiated in 2001 and is a collaboration between NHS Education for Scotland (NES) & ISD. The project aims to:

to provide an evidence based psychology workforce planning mechanism which will support decision making & priority setting in psychology workforce planning & educational development.
to provide those involved in the decision making process with an informed understanding of the complexities of the profession, and with a continual review & evaluation of the service.
to assess the skill-mix of staff employed within NHS psychology services.

A secure web based system is used to collect data on the NHSScotland Psychology Workforce. The system allows each organisation direct access to their Psychology staff records. It allows the addition, amendment & termination of records directly on the web and errors associated with the record are flagged up at source. Data from this system are extracted annually at census date (30th September), analysed and published. Please find further background information on the Metadata file (Metadata, xls, 29KB). Annual data is also collected on Psychology trainees at completion of the following courses:

D Clin Psych.
MSc in Psychological Therapy in Primary Care (adult).
MSc in Applied Psychology for Children and Young People.

Characteristics of the Workforce Supply in 2009 PDF (737KB) is the current report.

It is a joint publication between NES and ISD and includes:

Whole Time Equivalent (wte) and headcount data on the workforce of Clinical and Applied Psychologists in NHS Scotland.
wte and headcount data on the skill mix including Clinical Associates, Cognitive Behavioural Therapists (CBT), Assistant Psychologists and other therapists including creative therapists in Psychology Services.
data on Adult Mental Health Services.
data on Services Roles (eg direct & indirect patient contact, management, research & audit, Continuing Professional Development (CPD)).

The 2009 workforce data was collected and quality checked through engagement with the following organisations and groups: all NHSScotland Heads of Psychology Services and Heads of Specialties, NHS Education for Scotland Psychology Directorate, Scottish Government Applied Psychology Group. Data is used in the first instance for workforce planning and to provide a service to NHS Boards, for other known uses of the psychology data please see:Known uses of the Psychology Data, PDF (15KB)

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