A specialist group is warning of looming radiologist shortages in Scotland.

“We are on red alert – there is absolutely no doubt about this,” stressed Dr. Grant Baxter, chair of the Royal College of Radiologists in Scotland, told the BBC.

“There’s a huge shortage in Scotland of radiologists, and we’re in crisis. We now have thousands of unreported scans,” he warned, adding that, “there will be patients sitting in these unreported lists who have cancer and nobody knows it. These patients may well change from having a curable cancer to having an incurable cancer.”

If the situation is not dealt with now, he added, “there simply won't be a service in the next three, four, five years.”

More radiologists need to begin training and the IT systems need to be put in place to handle the caseload.

“The government needs to be bolder, listen to what we're saying, and increase the number of trainees. It is the key part of the solution,” he urged.

The problem is part of one that is global. “Despite an international shortage of radiologists affecting health services worldwide,” responded Health Secretary Jeane Freeman, according to Inews. “Since 2007 we have increased the number of clinical radiology consultants by 41 percent and increased radiography staff by 24.4 percent,” she noted, adding that the government “will also create an additional 50 specialist training places for clinical radiologists over the next five years, and have already filled all of the initial batch of these places.”

At the same time as Baxter sounded the healthcare alarm for the country, the Scottish Intensive Care Society Audit Group (SICSAG) reviewed records of 46,000 patients admitted in 2017 to wards for the most ill or injured, and found intensive care faced a crunch in Scotland, as well.

Fully seven percent of those in the ICU at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee were “discharged early, more than three times the Scottish average, with most being sent to another ward,” according to Inews reporting on the findings.

“This figure suggests that the number of physical ICU beds available at Ninewells Hospital is inadequate to meet the demands of the service,” the report stated, adding that, “at times of peak occupancy, ICU bed demand appears to exceed the supply and patients were discharged early to a lower level of care.”

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