What Is the Role Of a Physician Associate?

What does the Position of Physician Associate Mean for the NHS?

There are many different jobs within the NHS, each and every one of them offering a unique experience to those fulfilling these roles, one of these being the role of a physician associate. According to the NHS website, physician associates, “work in a GP surgery or are based in a hospital” and their responsibilities are typically: taking medical histories from patients, performing physical examinations, diagnosing illnesses, seeing patients with long-term chronic conditions, performing diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, analysing test results, developing management plans and providing health promotion, and disease prevention advice for patients.

Physician Associates must not be confused with doctors

Their role in the NHS is sometimes confused with that of a doctor or junior doctor, though they do not have the same authority and responsibilities of a doctor or junior doctor; for example, they are not allowed to order x-rays nor prescribe medicine to patients. To ensure that patients are aware of this separation, physician associates wear distinct badges or lanyards clearly marked with their role, and they are required to inform the patient of their job title. One physician associate, Sammy Chan, said, “I always explain and introduce myself to everyone, I say, ‘I’m a physician associate. While I work alongside doctors and nurses, I’m not a doctor, but I am medically trained to do certain things. And I can help provide some care.’”

Their role in the NHS is vital nonetheless, with their assistance being essential to assist junior doctors as the number of junior doctors and the workload at the NHS means that any help from additional staff members is appreciated.

However, what does the influx in Physician Associates mean for the patients?

The training for a physician associate is significantly less time than a doctor and this fact could have ramifications on NHS patients. A doctor in the NHS will complete five years of medical school before undertaking a further two years of placement before they can qualify as an NHS doctor. Physician associates, on the other hand, complete two years of training and 1600 hours of clinical training (the equivalent of just over two months) before they can be qualified as a physician associate. This stark difference in training causes some worry amongst frontline medics with concerns about how physician associates will need to be monitored by senior members of staff and that these plans seem to be, “ alarming and unsafe”.

Furthermore, the distinction between the physician associates and regular doctors can be difficult for patients to distinguish for a patient, Emily Chesterton, unfortunately died after believing the physician associate she was consulting about calf pain was a doctor. After her death, the coroner concluded that had she been sent to a hospital after her initial GP appointment, instead of being sent home with paracetamol, she would have most likely survived. Only after this tragic case were physician associates required to explicitly tell patients their title.

Doctors Association UK state that they believe confusion and possible exploitation of doctors and physician associates could, “compromise patient safety”.

Is the role of Physician Associate beneficial for both NHS and patients?

Overall, it is hard to make an accurate conclusion as to whether the rise in physician associates will be beneficial for both the intense workload of the NHS and the insurance of patient safety. The Catch-22 of physician associates is that whilst they can reduce the workload of junior doctors by taking on smaller jobs, they take up the time of senior staff members as they need to be monitored due to their lack of medical training, this lack of training potentially having negative effects on patient safety.

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