Replacing Qualified Doctors: A Threat to Patient Safety
Physician Associates (PAs), Anaesthesia Associates (AAs) and Surgical Care Practitioners are not doctors. Their training and professional development are a fraction of that required for doctors. Despite this, they see unselected and undifferentiated patients, diagnose and initiate treatment. Simultaneously, qualified doctors struggle to access training opportunities and to find employment.
Following an inquest into the death of a patient that concluded on July 29th 2024, the senior coroner for Manchester North wrote to the Department of Health and Social Care reporting lack of regulation and no national framework as to how PAs should be trained, supervised and deemed competent. The coroner said this places patients, PAs and their employers at risk.
The project to create a big expansion of PAs employed by the NHS is creating a two-tier health system and endangering patients.
Cases are increasingly reported of them making clinical decisions beyond their competence in primary and secondary care, including anaesthetics. There are numerous accounts of them replacing doctors on medical rotas.
Patients, the British Medical Association, and other professional bodies are very concerned.
Labour Conference resolves
1) To call for an immediate freeze in the recruitment of physician or anaesthesia associates and surgical care practitioners and the closure of their courses.
2) To urge government to review their regulation, scope and training.
3) That these three roles be phased out in the next 2 years and be reclassified as Medical Assistants with duties strictly limited to professional competence regulated consistently at national level, without exception.
The SHA is deeply concerned that the creation of a two tier health system will allow access to doctors for people who can pay and access to less qualified and regulated staff for the rest of us.