Physician assistants want courts to reverse ‘irrational’ ban on seeing undifferentiated patients
The physician assistant union blames the 'vindictive' British Medical Association for the government's crackdown.
Physician assistants are threatening legal action to overturn the UK Government’s decision to restrict their scope of practice and rename them.
NHS England’s 3500 physician assistants (PAs), formerly known as ‘physician associates’, were renamed earlier this month and banned from seeing undifferentiated patients following an independent review.
The review, led by Royal Society of Medicine president Professor Gillian Leng, backed British doctors’ concerns that PAs, with their two-year postgraduate qualifications, were risking patient safety.
In 2022, actress Emily Chesterton died from a pulmonary embolism that a PA, who she thought was a GP, had misdiagnosed as an ankle sprain.
