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This Scottish Budget comes at a time when our health and care services are under as much pressure as they have ever been. Our members are continuing to highlight significant pressures and concerns about patient safety across hospital, community and social care services.

At a time of unprecedented demand, any decisions that impact negatively on staffing levels will bring significant patient safety risks

As we’ve seen before, blanket approaches, such as recruitment freezes, are short sighted and will cause more harm and increase costs in the long run. As will reducing the skill mix, replacing the safety critical registered nurse role with nursing support workers or individuals from other professions. Safe nurse staffing levels should be non-negotiable and cutting registered nurse numbers doesn’t make economic sense.

If we are to see significant improvements in staff retention, increases in the number of people choosing to study nursing, and Scotland’s NHS and social care services reaching a point where safe nurse staffing levels are the norm rather than the exception, long term investment is required.