Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)10 March 2021
I absolutely agree. I think that, regardless of whether a future Government takes forward what was in this Government’s programme for government about a new medical school, there is a need to increase opportunities across our training services for all healthcare roles, to varying degrees, and, in doing so, to widen access and address some of the issues around equity.
ScotGEM is important because, apart from bringing an opportunity to ensure that there is a focus on remote and rural medicine and on general practice, it is an innovative approach that brings in graduates and delivers training in new ways, with new opportunities; that brings front-line expertise and experience into the learning; that offers new ways of designing the curriculum and harnessing practical front-line experience as part of student learning; and that does all of that while not compromising by one whit either quality or standards. I think that there is a lot in the design, the delivery and—so far—the success of ScotGEM to provide us with examples that we can learn from in other areas of medical undergraduate and postgraduate training, as well as other training and curriculum opportunities.
As colleagues have said, this is a short, technical bill, but, as I said before, we should not underestimate its importance. Members have mentioned a number of reasons why it is important, but, for me, at its core, the bill is about correcting what, by its longevity, became an injustice. Although that injustice affects an institution, in truth, it affects all of us and those we are here to represent, especially young people in relation to the richness and diversity of opportunities that we can offer them.
I am pleased that the bill has widespread support across the chamber, because it is important. In some of the areas that it seeks to address and in some of the examples that members have given, I think that it offers important pointers and learning to a future Government about how we might advance not only the number of people we bring into our health service but how we do that and how we incentivise them to repay the investment in their education and training by continuing to work for our quite marvellous NHS Scotland.