Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment her Department has made of the impact of the introduction of the physician associate role on workforce availability in areas of high patient demand for NHS services.

NHS England uses evidence and knowledge from bibliographic databases. There is also a significant body of peer-reviewed evidence from the United Kingdom and internationally on physician associates and anaesthesia associates which is available in the public domain. It demonstrates that these roles, appropriately supervised, improve access for patients, help reduce waiting lists and cut the workload for medically qualified staff.