A top doctor has warned "there is no way that the NHS in Scotland can survive" in its current form as he called for a national conversation on the future of the health service.
Dr Iain Kennedy, chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland, today warned that his NHS colleagues had told him over the past fortnight the "whole health and social care system in Scotland is broken".
In a stark warning, he said: "There is no way that the NHS in Scotland can survive. In fact, many of my members are telling me that the NHS in Scotland has died already."
"It’s already broken in some parts of the country. So the time is now, we need the national conversation now, it cannot be delayed any further."
Dr Kennedy will meet with under-pressure health secretary Humza Yousaf in the New Year.
Dr Kennedy said the Scottish Government was "well off" the 800 GPs it wanted to recruit by 2027, and that the number of vacancies for hospital doctors was also high.
In an interview with BBC Radio Scotland, he said there had been an “abject failure of workforce planning” and health staff were “exhausted, burnt-out and broken”.
“Over the past two weeks I have received testimonies from nearly 200 doctors, and what they’re telling me is that the whole health and social care system in Scotland is broken,” he said.
“They are telling me that NHS Scotland is failing their patients and failing the workforce, and they’re suffering from moral injury from constantly having to apologise to their patients.”
He said the number of vacancies in the health service was the worst he had seen in his 30-year career as a doctor.
Junior doctors in Scotland are preparing for industrial action as part of their demand for higher pay, and Dr Kennedy said their pay had “eroded by 23.5% since 2008”.
“They’ve had enough, they’ve told us that they’ve had enough, and they’ve been trying to get action from the Scottish Government but their requests are falling on deaf ears,” he said.
Dr Kennedy said while junior doctors in England were taking part in a strike ballot in January, north of the border it would be in the spring.
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