Leading doctors, including DAUK’s Dr David Nicholl and Dr Matt Kneale, are urging the Government to pause plans for the expansion of physician associates (PAs) in the NHS.
Dr Nicholl, DAUK committee member and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), and Dr Kneale, DAUK committee member and former chair, are among more than 30 top doctors who have written to the Times today.
In the letter, the doctors said that ‘Parliament was misled with statements implying widespread support from the medical profession’ when the Anaesthesia Associates and Physician Associates Order was debated earlier this year.
The legislation will make the General Medical Council (GMC) the regulator of PAs from December, which DAUK and other critics say blurs the lines between PAs and doctors.
Dr Nicholl and eminent colleagues have already written to the new Health and Social Care Committee chair Layla Moran MP to express the concern that Parliament was misled over the expansion of PA roles.
Now, in today’s letter to the Times, doctors are calling for the Health and Social Care Committee to investigate concerns about the role of PAs, and for a scope of practice to be established.
The doctors said: “When the order was debated, parliament was misled with statements implying widespread support from the medical profession.
“Yet the British Medical Association and a growing number of medical royal colleges have now expressed serious concerns about the implications for patient safety.”
Read the letter in full. And read the Times article on the letter.
Support the work of DAUK by signing up as a member.
