Physician associates are a relatively new healthcare role that the government is planning to expand. There is also a parallel roles of anaesthetic associate. They get 2 years of undergraduate training and then work with patients, with no subsequent formal training, but have to be supervised by doctors thereafter. As doctors therefore we are medico legally and clinically responsible for their work should there be an untoward patient outcome.
The government want these workers to be regulated by our doctor professional body the GMC. There is a regulatory body for healthcare professionals that don't have their own separate body (The Health and Care Professionals council) but the government has decided that they are better regulated by the Doctor's regulatory body which we believe blurs the boundaries for patients, As does their name. Fully trained doctors that have equivalent international training to our consultant doctors training are called Associate Specialists. Most patients find the term Physician Associate confusing and think it sounds like doctor and we believe the title and regulation by doctors regulatory body are both misleading and likely to lead to patients not understanding who they are seeing and the comparative significant lack of training they have.

The BMA is seeking to define their scope of practice to ensure patient safety. The Physician associate body, that advises them how they can work is threatening to sue doctors for attempts to have clear guidance to how they should work. So we are to be legally and clinically responsible for their work, but can't say how they are supposed to carry out their work.

They get 2 years training and then out to see patients.
Doctors get 5 years undergraduate, then 5-10 years+ postgraduate training ie supervised on the job training. I did 15 years post graduate doctor training before becoming a GP. It helps me do my job well and safely no?
Physician Associates can never work unsupervised by a doctor, can't train up staff but they earn more than some doctors in training, more than many fully qualified nurses who can work independently and supervise other nurses, etc.

I understand that doctor, nursing, paramedic, pharmacy training is long and gruelling with long undergraduate training and supervised, structured on-the-job with unsociable long shifts. With hierarchies of experience and routes of advancement (For nurses and paramedics there are bands; 9 nursing bands accessed by promotion based on training and experience; Doctors have post graduate training bands we go through (F1, F2, ST1-6) then GP or consultant).

Its gruelling, long undergraduate and post graduate training.

And It's for a good reason. We all take responsibility for peoples' lives and health and we take that very, very seriously.

I think 2 years study then out on good pay, working reasonable hours as a physician associate sounds nice. Someone else having medical responsibility for your decisions. This may be an attractive option.

But is it safe, is it even efficient (having staff that need forever supervision)or financially sensible? No, I don't think so.

They can't work without supervision or train up the roles coming through.
How is that useful?

We are short of nurses and doctors, paramedics and pharmacists, that is true and the gruelling training both undergraduate and postgraduate may put some aspiring health professionals off as may the £10s of thousands pounds worth of student debt.

The answer is not to create a novel healthcare position that doesn't involve the length of training of other health professionals, give them a name like physician that makes them sound like doctors, pay them like doctors, get them regulated by the doctor body and then wonder what could possibly go wrong.

The answer actually is to give nursing, medical, pharmacy and paramedic students bursaries to fully pay their fees and support their living costs while training and then decent working conditions to keep them in post.

This petition requests the government offers existing physician associates (and anaesthetic associates) the funding to train over to one of these structured and recognised training schemes; nursing, paramedic, doctor etc (if they can meet criteria to get on the course), and get them properly trained too so they can work independently and train up others.

If they don't want to expend the time and effort to do that gruelling training then I am afraid they must choose a different career.

Patient safety and quality of care always comes first.

Then limit the scope of practice of all of us to be working within our trained remit. We have the government pushing pharmacists and paramedics into GP surgeries to do GP work, doing patient clinics and the country is running short of pharmacists in community pharmacies and paramedics on ambulance services. While newly qualified GPs can't get work. What on earth is going on?

Some help is great. Pharmacists doing medication reviews in surgeries, paramedics doing home visits. This is what their training is for.
Random health professionals doing GP patient clinics is lunacy. Let's start calling this out. Pay us all properly and let us do the work we were trained for.

Pay the students to get trained and phase out asap this nebulous entity of physician associate role that is not fit for purpose.

My husband is an electrician. He doesn't get called out to fix someone's toilet or build a wall.

Why did any government ever think healthcare professionals could all do each others jobs or that politicians/managers could make up a new job, call it a doctor type name-'physician', get the role regulated by the doctors GMC regulatory body, give this role 2 years training instead of 10 years plus, and then send them out to do our jobs.