Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of cardiac physiologists worked in the NHS in each of the last five years.

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care or in general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.

The following table shows the number of qualified staff in cardiac physiology in National Health Service trusts and CCGs in England as at 30 September 2014 - 2017 and latest data as at 30 June 2018, full time equivalent:

Source: NHS HCHS monthly workforce statistics, NHS Digital

In 2013 as part of the Modernising Scientific Careers programme, the Occupation Codes for Healthcare Scientists were updated. Because of that change data on cardiac physiology is not available in 2013.

It is not possible to give the proportion of cardiac physiologists working in the NHS because accurate data on these workers outside of the NHS is not available.