NHS Grampian is currently undertaking a great deal of schemes to deal with its ongoing staff recruitment crisis.
In 2012/13, the health board had spent no money on hiring agency staff for its theatres, but by 16/17 the cost had rocketed to £1million.
There are currently around 420 nursing and midwifery vacancies in NHS Grampian hospitals.
And by the end of last year, the health board recorded 38 consultancy vacancies, 24 of which had been vacant for six months or more.
Staff shortages played a part in almost 100 operations being cancelled in November last year.
For the financial year 2015/16 a total of 1,058,967 hours were worked by supplementary staff, used to fill gaps on rotas caused by absences.
Of these, 986,878 were NHS bank staff while 72,089 were agency staff, who are non-NHS nurses.
However, the health board is actively working to rely less and less on temporary staff and recruit more permanent employees.
Last year, health chiefs confirmed that had taken on 100 new graduates from Robert Gordon University to help tackle the hospital’s shortage of contract nurses.
And in April the health board announced plans to guarantee jobs for physician associate graduates from Aberdeen University.
