2024-25 was the first year of the implementation of the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019. RCN was interested to discover the impact of the Act on nursing staff. This is despite the fact that the Act does not envisage or set down any explicit outcomes for staff, nursing or otherwise. We nevertheless reviewed the available data sources to see what they may be able to tell us, and this report is the result.

It is difficult to make a fair summary statement that covers everything we have found though our examination of the data sources. But insofar as this is possible, we would say that the implied outcomes for nursing staff that RCN has identified as present in the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 are not being achieved to any significant extent across the health and social care workforce in Scotland, and so nursing staff are not yet benefiting from the implementation of the Act in the ways or to the extent that RCN would expect or want to see.