Educate Yourself it May Save Your Life

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Please read the following link, this is the governments very questionable and dangerous solution to lack of medically qualified staff. These people are NOT medically qualified, please make sure you know who is treating you or your loved ones it could just save your or your loved ones life!
it is your right to know who is treating you and to make that choice.
This is the governments attempt to pull the wool over your eyes by spinning PA’s and AA’s as something they most definitely are not. They even get paid nearly twice as much as a qualified junior doctor who is responsible for them. Do you think that is reasonable, if you agree with me it’s YANBU!
https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/bma-calls-for-immediate-pause-on-recruitment-of-physician-associates

PAs, if effectively regulated and well managed, could be a great asset to the health service.

The ones I know are dedicated, well trained, clear about their role and extremely trustworthy.

Yes, we need to make sure we have enough doctors, and increased numbers of trainee doctors would be something I would absolutely support.

But we have plenty of clinical staff who aren't doctors who do great jobs and there's absolutely no need to suggest they are dangerous because the public don't have a full awareness of them. Loads of roles that exist now either didn't exist or have a wider scope than they did before.

That doesn't mean that there aren't risks, that they won't make errors (no one can be guaranteed not to make errors) or that they don't need to be regulated, monitored and with suitable planned roles.

But the NHS is in a state and we need more clinicians and to create a sustainable service. Physicians associates, alongside other clinicians and hopefully and expanded number of trainee doctors seem to me like a great and sensible way to do this.

I got asked to teach student PAs safe prescribing (something I routinely do with medical students, doctors in training, nurse practitioners etc) and I agreed that I would do it as soon as they could clarify who was their regulatory body, so I could ensure that it was consistent with their recommendations, as I always do for other staff groups. Only they don't have a regulatory body. They are accountable to no one. Which is terrifying. (Obviously I knew this when I asked)

@Catza have you read about the recent patient deaths due to mismanagement by PAs who introduced themselves as doctors?!

where AHPs can play a vital role in providing certain services, it is very important for patient safety that roles are clearly defined and competencies established. I have worked with excellent PAs, but the degree to which the government is planning on using PAs to fill the physicia shortages is nothing less than criminal. patients will be harmed and are being harmed. there is no short-cut to becoming a clinician. ps nhs medic since 2010 so have had plenty of experience

@Papillon23 I agree with you, but they in no way can replace physicians themselves. they are simply not qualified enough. as it is we are severely understaffed (in all the roles, not just doctors) and the easy fix of getting staff from the EU is gone.

That's not really the PAs' fault though is it?

The PAs I know all WANT to be regulated. But they can't compel someone to regulate them.

I am of this opinion too.

what currently sits uncomfortably with me
is the way the PAs are being targeted as dangerous - this seems like almost whole scale bullying.

i feel there is room for all here in an NHS that has huge staffing gaps and massive waiting lists it needs to be pulling together to pulling itself apart.

I have zero issues with more regulations and defined boundaries. In fact the linked statement by the BMC is very sensible. Unfortunately, the OPs posts aren’t and appear to vilify anyone who isn’t “medically trained”. As a result, patients refuse to work with anyone who isn’t a medic which impacts on quality of their care. It’s become fashionable to bash the NHS though so I’ll just leave it at that.

What’s the basis of your grudge against an entire profession OP? Your posts don’t read as terribly well-informed or balanced so I’m just very curious as to why you’re stirring up even more online discontent against a profession that’s had more than it’s fair share of hate-mongering online lately. The tone and scope of your posts just seem really odd.

I don't know as much as you about PAs and AAs as I do not work in healthcare, but the General Practice needs to be totally overhauled.

There need to be fewer GPs and more specialist nurses and PAs who deal with diabetes, mental health issues etc.

No-one wants to be a GP and I don't blame them. They are just overpaid adminstrators and their skills could be much better used in hospitals.

Catza, still not a medical qualification though is it. That is a rhetorical question

But you can’t possibly know that’s how they all introduce themselves @Catza . I’ve no personal axe to grind here but it does irritate me when posters say authoritatively that something happens when they have no idea. What you mean is it should happen, but without following every PA up and down the country, you cannot know.

IMustDoMoreExercise totally agree

"Most people don't even know what a physicians associate even means!"

Well not having heard of them before, I've just read this entire thread and I'm none the wiser, so perhaps you could explain what they are / are not trained to do.

No grudge, I just think there is a lack of awareness in the general public as to what this job title actually means. People have a right to know who is treating them and what that they are qualified to do in that role. Outside healthcare most people don’t know the role of the PA or the AA.

Don’t completely agree with everything you have said, but really balanced view thank you

The underlying problem is that PAs really aren't a profession. The idea is that you can take someone with a degree, give them 2 years training and that's enough to work alongside doctors with 5 years undergrad followed by postgrad training. What training they get after qualification is pretty unspecified, and the expectations of what they can do vary enormously - but I get the impression they are typically told they can work like F2/ST1 doctors (ie doctors 2-3 years post qualification) in a limited area (and they are paid more than them). The fundamental problem is that their training is not enough for them to understand what they don't know. The other problem is that PAs don't have a defined career path to progress after a few years in work.

I was in a position to do some informal teaching with some PA students recently which left me thinking they were being totally let down - they would all have been much better served by doing a proper medical degree and having proper breadth and depth rather than skating quickly over so much and being left with massive gaps.

It's critical that the general public know that "Physician Associate" and "Physician" are two very different things. Allied health professionals of all kinds are a very important part of health care, but for safe diagnosis of medical problems you need medical training and the risk is that people with limited training are limited in diagnostic ability, because when something is uncommon they don't have the knowledge and/or experience to spot it.

I have another teaching topic that I have delivered loads of times with medical students, very interactive, needs them to use a bit of logic and apply their prior learning. I was asked to do the same topic with PA students. I was asked to deliver it at the same level, as "they're just as good" and not to dumb it down. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was a total disaster. They had a fraction of the background knowledge compared to the 3rd year medical students. Which wasn't their fault. It just shows that there aren't shortcuts to having a doctor's knowledge and experience. I heavily simplified things before the next time, and honestly half of them were still struggling. I feel sorry for them, because they have been sold a lie.

It has been identified that with the current ICE access, Physicians Associates have been able to request lonising Radiation procedures. Only registered health care professionals are authorised to make a referral for ionising radiation imaging under the lonising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations (IR(ME)R) 2017. This is outside the Physicians Associate scope of practice and contravenes lonising Radiation Regulations.
Therefore, we are confirming with immediate effect that Physicians Associates are not authorised to request ionising radiation imaging through ICE and access will be restricted for this.
We fully appreciate the important role and support provided by Physicians Associates in the treatment and care of our patients, this decision is being taken to support Physicians Associates and clinical teams in their work, to ensure we are working within the lonising
Radiation Regulations.

Overstepping their boundaries! Which either aren’t clearly defined or are being ignored! Who is regulating this?

Thank you for understanding why I posted this you have summed it up far more eloquently than I did.

What did she spend 5 years studying? Is wasn't to be a PA was it?

I always choose GP wherever possible when online booking and avoid the PAs who I have found to be absolutely useless in the past. One told me my son didn't need vaccine which he did need. In fairness I have been forced to see one a few time this year when it's the receptionists making the appointment and it's been this young guy in his early 20s who told me he is training to be a paramedic? Nice guy and tries to be helpful but a complete waste of everyone's time as a 10 minute appointment becomes a half hour one as he keeps having to go out to check with a doctor whether he should prescribe something, what dose and then has to go out again to get a doctor to do the prescription, as he can't. Waste of everyone's time...

I'd rather speak to a qualified pharmacist tbh and that does seem to be an option now at my GP.

An old school friend of mine is a PA, she was mediocre at school, never in top set for anything. Her degree is psychology, so doesn’t lend itself to treating patients in a medical capacity. So all she has really is the 2 year course.

I think I would be wary in a GP scenario where anything could be wrong, but have experience of a PA post surgery- she attended with the surgeon to do initial post operation checks and then came back by herself subsequently. I had not heard of the role (despite a lot of hospital experience) so queried and she explained. In that limited scope role (assisting the surgical team with post surgery inspections) I thought it was a good use of resources. However broader roles not suitable. And hospital doctor friends don’t seem to like PAs much….

I think the problems are that they don't have a governing body and their roll isn't defined.

My only direct experience is second hand, my carer came back from holiday covered in insect bites, I looked at them and said I thought they might be infected.

It was the weekend so he went to a pharmacy who told him to see his GP because it was infected.

On Monday morning he got an appointment with the PA who took one look, said it was infected and he needed to see the Dr. The PA went to fetch the Dr who wanted to send him to hospital for IV antibiotics.

Anyway two lots of antibiotics and dressings changed every other day by a HCA and all is well.

role not roll.