---

Health Professions: Recruitment and Training

Answer

The number of Scientist Training Programme (STP) trainees in Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering has tended to increase, with larger increases in recent years. The number of Higher Specialist Scientist Training (HSST) trainees has remained fairly constant. The following two tables show the number of trainees in the Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering STP each year since 2011, and the number of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering trainees in HSST each year since 2014, respectively:

Year	Medical Physics STP	Clinical Engineering STP
2011	61	8
2012	60	14
2013	67	13
2014	72	18
2015	72	8
2016	66	9
2017	73	20
2018	76	16
2019	86	13
2020	77	17
2021	83	25
2022	103	12
2023	118	21
2024	117	15

Note: The data for 2024 is subject to change, and without the Wales numbers.

Year	Medical Physics HSST	Clinical Engineering HSST
2014	14	1
2015	29	1
2016	26	2
2017	23	2
2018	12	2
2019	15	4
2020	16	0
2021	15	2
2022	11	N/A
2023	17	2
2024	8	2

Notes:

- the data for 2024 is subject to change, and without the Wales numbers; and

- data is not available for the year 2022.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out the future National Health Service workforce requirements, and includes healthcare science figures, though this is not broken down into Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering workforce targets. The plan assesses that education and training places for healthcare scientists need to increase by 20 to 34%, reaching between 930 and 1,039 places by 2033/34. The ambition set out in this plan is to increase training places for healthcare scientists by 32%, to over 1,000 places, by 2031/32. We will work towards achieving this ambition by increasing training places by 13%, to over 850, by 2028/29.

The workforce plan also sets out the ambition to retain up to 130,000 more staff across the NHS over the next 15 years, through measures to improve staff’s experience of working in the NHS. This applies to all NHS staff groups, including medical physicists and clinical engineers.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

19089

Session

2023-24

Subjects

Health professions Engineering Recruitment Training Physics

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk