Exclusive:'Someone could die': NHS nurse forced to go private amid smear test referral waits and low uptake
An NHS nurse has been forced to go private after facing a long wait after receiving an urgent referral for a cervical screening.
An NHS nurse has warned that “someone could die” as she is forced to wait for a cancer diagnosis, after it was revealed uptake of cervical screening is lagging behind SNP targets.
The nurse, who has worked for the NHS for 30 years, was forced to go private to receive a consultation and has said “we are failing women” with the hold-ups.
Her warning comes as statistics published by the Scottish Government reveal targets for update of cervical screening are not being met. Smear tests are offered to women aged between 25 and 64 years.
Scotland’s cervical cancer screening programme achieved 63.3 per cent coverage in the financial year 2023/24 compared with a target performance threshold of 80 per cent.
Cervical screening uptake, within six months of an invite or reminder letter, was 51.9 per cent in 2023/24, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from 50.5 per cent in 2022/23, but far below the 80 per cent threshold.
The data also revealed that coverage was lower in the most deprived areas of Scotland at 56.5 per cent, compared with 67.7 per cent in the least deprived areas, a difference of more than 11 percentage points.
The nurse, being referred to only as Helen to remain anonymous, received an urgent referral for further gynaecological checks in October 2024, after a routine cervical screening.
An urgent referral should take no more than two weeks, yet after three months, Helen still had not heard anything. After chasing up her referral, she spoke to a woman who told her that there was a 11-month backlog of urgent referrals and that she herself was on a waiting list.
Faced with a 69 week wait, Helen ended up paying for a private consultation instead.
‘We are failing women’
She said: “This is serious — we are supposed to be a progressive society but we are failing women.
"I know from my own background as a nurse that an urgent referral is for anything that is a recognised red flag requiring further diagnostic tests.
"I worry that someone could die because their cancer was not picked up soon enough, and that in turn will impact their whole family.
"I was reading about the commitments made in the women's health plan but if we have 69 weeks for urgent gynaecology appointments we are failing women.
"We have recently started to take women's health seriously but here we are in 2025 with waiting lists like that."
Scottish Labour women’s health spokesperson, Carol Mochan, said the latest figures “shows women are still being failed by this SNP government with potentially life-threatening consequences”.
She added: “Women in the poorest communities are paying the harshest price for the SNP’s failure to make screenings accessible and convenient.
“Self-sampling could be a game-changer in boosting cervical cancer screening and tackling these shameful inequalities, but the SNP government broke its promise to roll this out.”
Scottish Conservative women’s health spokesperson, Annie Wells said: “Cervical screening is crucially important, so these deeply alarming figures are yet another indicator of the SNP’s mismanagement of our health service.
“Whether the dangerously low uptake among women is down to poor public health messaging or the well-documented blunders that saw women wrongly removed from the screening programme, it must be reversed.
“Given the SNP’s appalling record on cancer treatment times, it’s imperative that women with cervical cancer are diagnosed as early as possible – and an effective and comprehensive screening programme is essential to that.”
At-home screening
South of the Border, at-home screening kits will be offered to women who have rarely or have never attended a cervical screening from January while in Scotland, self-sampling tests will be offered, at first, to those in more deprived areas from Spring next year.
Last month it was revealed that NHS Dumfries and Galloway in the only health board in Scotland where self-sampling has been piloted.
SNP Public Health Minister, Jenni Minto, said: “Four in 10 cervical cancers are detected through screening among women who are eligible for it. These cancers are often at an earlier, more treatable stage which is why I encourage anyone invited for cervical screening to participate.
“We are making considerable efforts to increase coverage and uptake, with annual funding of £1 million supporting initiatives that seek to address inequalities across cancer screening.
“The first self-sampling kits will be offered by Spring 2026 and the initial roll-out will focus on several of the most deprived areas, which have some of the highest numbers of under-screened women.”
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