We wouldn't need all these physician associates to plug gaps if they funded proper medical training the same way they fund other health courses.
I reckon a lot of people doing these physician associate courses would probably make great GPs with the right training but they are choosing these courses because most people have to follow the funding and you can get a funded apprenticeship to train as a PA or do it as an "allied health" subject on a postgrad course with a postgraduate student loan.
The PA course is attractive because it's shorter than a nursing degree (FFS) with more responsibility if they go to work in an average GP practice or A+E where they're supposed to be supervised but really who has the time to do that properly?
I'd love to retrain as a doctor, have wanted to since I graduated, and know I would be good at it if I did. But there's no access to any sort of student loan to pay for the 5 year undergraduate medical degree course fees, I don't have a related enough degree to walk into the postgrad one (which isn't well funded AFAIK either) and I don't have £45,000 sitting around plus living expenses. You can get a student loan to pay for a second degree in any allied health courses, nursing, paramedics, but not medicine, dentistry or pharmacy. Despite the fact we need a lot more doctors and dentists than art therapists right now.
Until they sort out proper funding for training to be a doctor and widen access so those of us who are from non-traditional backgrounds with the same aptitude have a reasonable chance of getting a place on a course and completing it (i.e. not having to leave for financial reasons), they're going to keep throwing out these stupid sticking plasters and complaining they have a shortage of doctors of their own making. And these sort of mistakes are the result.
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