Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that 5000 more clinical support staff, including practice nurses, will be hired by 2020, as part of a 'new deal' for general practice.
In a speech at the Nelson Medical Centre in South West London, Mr Hunt detailed plans to invest in and strengthen general practice services. This will include recruiting more practice nurses, as well as 1000 more physician associates by 2020. An additional 5000 GPs will also be hired in the same period.
The exact number of practice nurses that will be recruited as part of the announcements has not been released, and will be determined by work such as that of Martin Rowland, professor of health services research at the University of Cambridge, who will chair an independent commission on the primary care workforce, as well as the Five Year Forward View.
A spokesperson for the DH said: 'We would expect nurses in the community, including practices nurses, to be a key part of this as they play a central role to providing safe and effective healthcare to patients and are often the first port of call for a patient's within GP surgeries.'
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the RCN, said: 'We welcome this announcement as it is a further step towards the goal of delivering high-quality patient care at any time of the week. While GPs are central, practice nurses have a huge contribution to make and will be essential if a seven-day service is to be realised.'
It is unclear where the additional nurses, GPs and physicians associates will be recruited from, although HEE has increased the number of commissions for the training of practice nurses by 64.7% and physician associates by 754.2% (currently, there are only 250) as part of their workforce plan for 2015/16.
A spokesperson for HEE said: 'We need to recruit people based on these values and then we need to train and educate them to be ready for the NHS of the future, ready and able to adapt to change and lead innovation on behalf of the patients they serve.'
Other initiatives announced include a drive to encourage more healthcare professionals to work in general practice, and a £10 million fund to create a 'turnaround programme' for struggling general practices.
Mr Hunt added that to benefit from the new deal general practice staff would have to agree to the implementation of plans to create a seven-day primary care service. He said: ' The vision for out of hospital care set out in the Five Year Forward View requires more investment in primary care so this is the biggest opportunity for new investment in general practice in a generation. But in return I will need [health professionals] help to deliver a profound change in the quality of care we offer patients.'
Dr Carter added: 'Developing a preventative health service is an important strategy. There is no one solution to providing a seven-day health service – it will take highly skilled multidisciplinary teams to achieve this goal.'
Prime minister David Cameron revealed the plans to implement seven-day services in his first major speech after the general election. However, while he spoke about the need to strengthen primary care, practice nursing was not mentioned.
The health secretary also revealed that over £190 million of resources from the Primary Care Infrastructure Fund had been approved for distribution between over 1000 general practices in England.