NHS Grampian says it expects to break even this year despite reporting a £5.5m budget overspend in December.

The health board said the extra spending was largely due to the cost of agency staff.

The overspend was calculated at the end of December but only revealed in a report on Thursday.

Difficulties recruiting staff have lead to an increasing reliance on agency workers at NHS Grampian.

A total of £2m was spent on agency nurses in the financial year 2015/16, up from £70,000 in 2011/12.

NHS Grampian was given an extra £50m to help it tackle the problem in 2015.

A ​spokesman for NHS Grampian said: "Our current expectation is that we will 'break even' as predicted."

The health board has recently been forced to delay operations because of a shortage of theatre nurses.

There are around 30 vacancies and about 6% of surgeries scheduled for January (73 of 1248) were postponed as a result.

Mikey Bateman waited six weeks for an operation after breaking his arm during a Christmas night out.

"They said they would try to do the surgery the next day, so I spent the day at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, fasted overnight and went in to be told that the operation would not be going ahead because they had run out of surgery time," he said.

"There were four surgical visits which were cancelled on the day."

Mr Bateman eventually decided to have the operation performed by a private surgeon.