‘Concerns of doctors have been ignored for too long’: UK reviewing whether physician associates are safe
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said doctors' concerns about role substitution needed to be taken seriously.
The training, scope and supervision requirements for the UK’s 3500 physician associates is under review after years of warnings from doctors about the “cheap medical substitutes”.
Introduced in 2004, physician associates (PAs) were intended to work under medical supervision following their completion of two-year master’s degree, taking histories, conducting physical examinations and writing treatment plans.
But doctors had become worried about PAs increasingly encroaching onto medical territory, including diagnosis of undifferentiated patients.
Critics pointed to the case of Emily Chesterton, a 30-year-old actress who died from a pulmonary embolism after a PA misdiagnosed her with an ankle sprain.
