Lib Dems reveal hundreds of senior medics taking early retirement every year

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today revealed that Scotland is losing dozens of senior medics every year to early retirement as he called for the Scottish Government to encourage experienced professionals to stay on to help the hundreds of thousands of Scots languish on waiting lists.

A Freedom of Information request submitted by the Scottish Liberal Democrats to the Scottish Public Pensions Authority revealed that just 60 of the 2,122 practitioners who have retired since 2015 waited until the state pension age to do so. The practitioners category covers GPs but also specialist medical practitioners, including surgeons and neurologists. The number retiring early has steadily increased from 194 in 2015 to 315 in 2023.

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:  

“When the equivalent of one in seven Scots is on an NHS waiting list, alarm bells should be going off in the Health Secretary’s office.

“Everyone should be able to rely on swift and reliable care close to home but a shortage of experienced staff is creating stress for medics and pain for patients.  

“Part of the solution lies in recruiting new staff but many of these will take years to train. The Scottish Government should doing far more to encourage the experienced and talented medics leaving the profession early each year to stay on.  

“Part of that could involve embedding more nurses, dieticians and physiotherapists in communities so that people can get a wider range of diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care within their community. This would reduce the burden on specialist practitioners, allow them to focus on the most complex cases and encourage experienced professionals to stay.”