Assessing the Contributions of Additional Role Practitioner v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessing the Contributions of Additional Role Practitioners to general practice in England (CARPE) V1
IRAS ID
311523
Contact name
Stavros Petrou
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 2 months, 30 days
Research summary
Policymakers are encouraging GPs to employ staff called “additional role practitioners” (ARPs), who are not doctors and/or nurses but have other skills.
We will try to answer the following questions about ARPs:
1) How are these new staff spread across England? Which roles exist and how do practices differ in the type of services that they offer? How has the hiring of additional roles changed over the years?
2) What roles do ARPs undertake? Which type of patients use these staff? Are there differences across practices in the type of patients who use these staff?
3) Do these additional roles help to reduce GP workloads and staff shortages, and improve the health of patients? What are the costs and the benefits for practices and patients?
4) How can GPs and the new staff work together to achieve the best patient care?We will answer these questions in 5 work packages:
(1) An umbrella review that collects evidence from existing systematic reviews.
(2) Characterisation of the recent and current workforce and workload of ARPs in general practice in England, using data drawn from the NHS Digital Primary Care Workforce Minimum Dataset, and practice-level and patient-level data from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC).
(3) Analyses to estimate the effects of additional role practitioners on clinical workload, health outcomes, quality indicators and patient satisfaction using patient-level data extracted from RCGP RSC records linked to practice-level Quality Outcomes Framework and GP Patient Survey data.
(4) Analyses that estimate the effects of additional role practitioners on health care costs using patient-level data extracted from RCGP RSC records and linked Hospital Episode Statistics.
(5) Qualitative research on the wider effects of workforce changes, including the influences of employment/deployment decisions by primary care networks and general practices and how their work is operationalised.REC name
East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/EE/0086
Date of REC Opinion
31 May 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion