What’s your view of Physician Associates?

Recent news headlines, where failures in the practise of PAs have led to misdiagnosis of patients and catastrophic failures in care, call into question the role of a PA and whether it needs to be revisited.

Are they simply a cost-effective way of helping to provide a service where there are issues in recruitment of doctors, or are they part and parcel of essential reforms in an under pressure, underfunded NHS?

So, who are PAs and what training do, they have?

Usually they have a first degree, often science based, and then undertake a 2-year post graduate programme.

This is to be compared to doctor training and nurse training – both of whom train for longer periods and have to spend time ‘in practise’ on wards and/or community settings being assessed as competent.

Further confusion around the concept comes when you compare the starting salary of a PA [just over £43,000] with that of a foundation year junior doctor [just over £36,500] or a newly qualified nurse [band 5 – £28,400].

Experienced doctors and nurses both report issues in role boundaries and confusion over responsibilities with their role and that of a PA. PA’s report the same. Clearly there are agreed issues, even if not agreement about their solutions.

Many argue that the answers to the problems facing the NHS in terms of staff recruitment and retention could have been better solved and with lesser expense if a review of roles and posts that already exist had been undertaken.

The Faculty of Physician Associates is to close next month, with regulatory oversight moving to the GMC.

We await, with interest, to see what the GMC will be required/decide to investigate as cases involving PAs filter through their processes. Will they be treated akin to doctors in terms of responsibilities and culpabilities, or will the GMC seek to differentiate in some way?

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how the MPTS approach the matter. We suspect it will not be until the first few completed regulatory hearings (and likely subsequent High Court appeals) that there will be any clarity on the issue.