Primary Care Workforce Quarterly Update, 30 June 2023, Experimental Statistics

New job roles were added to the National Workforce Reporting Service (NWRS) collection tool for the Primary Care Network Workforce since the last release in this series. They are:

Direct Patient Care:

• Applied Psychologist – Clinical
• General Practice Assistant*
• Social Worker
• Peer Support Worker
• Clinical Associate in Psychology
• Trainee Clinical Associate in Psychology
• Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner
• Trainee Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner
• Apprentice Physician Associate

* The General Practice Assistant role was also added to NWRS for the general practice workforce.

Nursing:

• Community Mental Health Nurse

There is now also new NWRS functionality to specify whether certain roles are Mental Health Practitioners, and whether they cover adult or young people’s care. The applicable roles are:

Direct Patient Care:

• Social Worker
• Peer Support Worker
• Applied Psychologist – Clinical
• Social Prescribing Link Worker
• Therapist – Counsellor
• Therapist – Other
• Clinical Associate in Psychology
• Trainee Clinical Associate in Psychology
• Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner
• Trainee Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner

Nursing:

• Community Mental Health Nurse

All these roles, including the Mental Health Practitioner variants, are included for the first time in this release.  

NWRS only tables

In the NWRS only tables (which combine the general practice and Primary Care Network Workforce figures for all staff groups), Mental Health Practitioners for adults, and Mental Health Practitioners for children and young people, have been grouped as Mental Health Practitioners for each of the job roles they relate to. In the Individual-level CSV which accompanies the Primary Care Network Workforce publication, the type of Mental Health Practitioner is presented in the Detailed_staff_role field. 

Collated Direct Patient Care FTE tables

In the ARRS claims data, Mental Health Practitioner is a standalone role. Therefore, in these tables, where NWRS roles have been recorded as a Mental Health Practitioner, the roles have been grouped into one Mental Health Practitioner role.  For each of the applicable roles, users can also note that these individual are not Mental Health Practitioners. These roles are presented separately and are therefore distinct from the Mental Health Practitioner figures. Community Mental Health Nurse is a non-Direct Patient Care role which can be flagged as a Mental Health Practitioner in NWRS. Because PCNs are likely to have claimed for staff filling these roles as Mental Health Practitioners, where Community Mental Health Nurses have been flagged as Mental Health Practitioners in NWRS, they have been included in the collated calculations. Where they have been flagged as non-Mental Health Practitioners, they have been excluded since these tables are intended to cover the Direct Patient Care staff group only.

The inclusion of Mental Health Practitioners and General Practice Assistants for the first time in this release means comparisons of the total England collated FTE with earlier quarters should be treated with caution since these roles account for a large proportion of the increase in FTE between March 2023 and June 2023. It is possible that some of these staff were captured previously in the Other Direct Patient Care role in NWRS before being recategorised by June 2023. However, comparatively small decreases in the Other Direct Patient Care role FTE suggest the majority of Mental Health Practitioners and General Practice Assistants are being captured for the first time in this release.

All tables

For each of the applicable Mental Health Practitioner roles, users can also mark these individuals as non-Mental Health Practitioners. These roles are presented separately and are therefore distinct from the Mental Health Practitioner figures. The majority of these applicable roles are introduced for this release. Social Prescribing Link Workers and Therapists were already included and so it is likely that, where these roles have now been flagged as Mental Health Practitioners, the non-Mental Health Practitioner figures for these roles may be negatively affected as individuals are recategorised.