Physician Associates & the NHS workforce crisis (Version 1.0)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
How might Physician Associates help (or not) address the workforce crisis in the NHS?
IRAS ID
334923
Contact name
Attakrit Leckcivilize
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford Research Governance, Ethics and Assurance
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 30 days
Research summary
The National Health Service (NHS) is facing a workforce crisis; more people need more complex care, there is a shortage of healthcare workers, and limited funding. One partial solution is to develop new types of healthcare workers to share tasks with existing professionals. The NHS quietly began developing one new type of worker, Physician Associates (PAs), 20 years ago and now about 1000 will graduate each year. PAs are graduates who undergo a further two-year condensed training not to be doctors but to help deliver medical care. Despite an original aim that PAs might help GP practices it seems that 70% currently work in hospitals.
Our project tackles the three knowledge gaps to:
1. Improve NHS workforce data so it can show where PAs are working and in which roles in the future, while we develop and test methods to find out how PAs careers progress over time, and to learn from PAs completing their training about things that influence their career choices.
2. Find and analyse the research on how PAs have successfully been integrated into hospital teams (or what went wrong) in other countries.
3. Examine carefully in selected NHS hospital Trusts what PAs are doing to learn more from the experiences of managers, doctors, nurses, patients and PAs themselves and compare experiences around PAs with that of other types of similar healthcare workers. We aim to understand what works (or does not), for whom, where and why in the UK.
By involving professional organisations, the public and patients nationally and locally , our research aims to help the NHS and hospitals make informed decisions on if, when and how to use PAs. We hope to help explain what PAs do and who they are to avoid confusion as PAs likely to be more commonly seen in future.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/NW/0116
Date of REC Opinion
30 May 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion