Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is their policy on the use of physician associates in roles previously held by qualified doctors, and how many physician associates have worked in the NHS in England in each of the past five years.

The Government is clear that physician associates (PAs) are not doctors. PAs must always work under the supervision of a fully trained and experienced doctor, working with them, not replacing them.

NHS Employers provide a checklist for employers to follow when looking at recruiting medical associate professionals (MAPs). The checklist sets out that “MAPs are not doctors and cannot and must not replace doctors. They must not be considered as ‘equivalent to’ certain grades of doctor”.

We do not hold complete data on PA numbers for each of the last five years. However, the following table provides figures for the number of full time equivalent (FTE) PAs employed in both National Health Service trusts and primary care from 2019 to 2024:

Sources: NHS England’s NHS Workforce Statistics, General Practice Workforce Statistics, and Primary Care Quarterly Workforce Update.

Notes:

• data is only published for PAs employed in hospitals and other core organisation settings, such as commissioning bodies, from 2020 onwards, and is based on the job role held in the Electronic Staff Record, the human resources system used by the NHS; and
• PAs in primary care settings may be employed directly by general practices or may be employed through other routes, such as by primary care networks. Data is only available for PAs employed directly by general practices prior to 2021, and as such there will be an under count of the total number across primary care.

The Government has commissioned Professor Gillian Leng CBE to lead an independent review of the physician and anaesthesia associate professions. It will consider the safety of the roles and their contribution to multidisciplinary healthcare teams. The conclusions of the review will inform the workforce plan to deliver the 10-Year Health Plan.

The review will consider the approach that was adopted in England to support the safe introduction, employment, and deployment of these new roles.