Dr Kevin Power, head of NHS Tayside Clinical Psychology Service, said extra staff had been appointed and changes introduced in the way patients were referred to the service and assessed.

Further, Dr Power explained that clinical psychology staff had a range of qualifications and patients could now opt to be seen more quickly by some members of staff or wait longer to be seen by others.

The head of service told members of NHS Tayside’s primary care division committee meeting in King’s Cross Hospital, Dundee, today that the changes had been introduced “not to any detriment of patient satisfaction”.

But Dr Power warned there could be difficulty sustaining the improvements in waiting times because there was a national shortage of clinical psychologists.

Although Tayside had found funding for extra posts, there was difficulty recruiting and some posts across the region remained unfilled.

The organisation is recruiting aggressively, trying to target clinical psychologists in training in the hope they will commit to jobs in Tayside post qualification. Dr Power said people in the final year of training were being approached in a bid to attract them to jobs in Tayside ahead of the competition who were recruiting to posts elsewhere.

“We have managed to increase the number of (clinical psychology) staff in Tayside but still have vacancies because of the national shortage,” said Dr Power.

Chairman Liz Forsyth said that Dr Power was presenting “a very different story” from a couple of years ago when she and her colleagues were told of lengthy waits to see a clinical psychologist.

“That doesn’t happen without a lot of hard work and redesign (of the service),” said Mrs Forsyth.

Earlier Dr Bill Mutch, the primary care division’s medical care director, pointed out that the Scottish Executive driven target to reduce maximum waiting times for out-patient appointments to 26 weeks by the end of the year, did not apply to primary care services. However, the primary care division set itself the “self-imposed target” of a maximum wait of six months.

Dr Mutch said the drug problem service in Tayside had also recorded “a massive turnaround” in waiting times.

Commenting on the self-imposed target, Mrs Forsyth said, “We are saying to our patients ‘You are not on the political agenda but you are important to us’.”