The National Health Service (Vocational Training) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 1991

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Order)

These Regulations amend the National Health Service (Vocational Training) (Scotland) Regulations 1980 (“the principal Regulations”) which prescribe the medical experience which, under section 21 of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978, a medical practitioner is required to have acquired, or to be exempt from the need to have acquired, before his name may be included in a list of general medical practitioners maintained under section 19 of that Act.

In Regulation 2 the definition of “health authority” in regulation 2(1) of the principal Regulations is amended to include a reference to an NHS trust (established under the 1978 Act as amended by the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 (c. 19)), so that a doctor’s employment in an educationally approved post in a hospital managed by an NHS trust may count towards the vocational training prescribed in regulation 5 of the principal Regulations. Amendment is also made in that regulation so that a consultant employed in clinical practice by an NHS trust is eligible for membership of the appeal body constituted under regulation 9 of the principal Regulations (regulation 2(2)).

These Regulations also amend regulation 8 of the principal Regulations in so far as it exempts from the need to have acquired the prescribed medical experience a doctor who seeks to have his name included in a medical list only for the provision of a limited category or categories of general medical services. The amendment includes child health surveillance services and minor surgery services among those categories, and makes consequential changes elsewhere in that regulation (regulation (3)).