Physician Associates: Recruitment

(asked on 11th January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to recruit physician associates to the NHS in (a) primary and (b) secondary care settings.


Answered by
Andrew Stephenson Portrait
Andrew Stephenson
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 16th January 2024

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years.

The Plan will focus on expanding enhanced, advanced, and associate roles to offer modernised careers, with a stronger emphasis on the generalist and core skills needed to care for patients with multimorbidity, frailty or mental health needs. This includes setting an ambition to grow the proportion of staff in these newer roles from approximately 1% to 5% in the next 15 years. As part of this, we will increase physician associate training places to over 1,500 by 2031/32. Over 1,200 physician associates (PAs) will be trained per year from 2023/24, increasing to over 1,400 a year in 2027/28 and 2028/29, establishing a workforce of 10,000 PAs by 2036/37.

At a local level, NHS organisations are best placed to determine their own recruitment needs, informed by their workforce, service and financial planning and ensuring there is sufficient skilled workforce in both primary and secondary care settings.

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