Medical associate professionals: we need calm heads and a pause

As Partha Kar said in his recent column, the whole situation around medical associate professionals, including physician associates and anaesthetic associates, is “an unqualified mess.”1 The latest development in the debate is that the BMA has called for a pause in the recruitment of medical associate professionals to allow time to resolve the matters of scope of practice, the level of supervision, and statutory regulation.2 Expansion of medical associate professionals was a key part of the NHS Workforce Plan, which proposed introducing 10 000 physician associates in total by 2036.3 But doctors have voiced their concerns about the risks of medical associate professionals performing tasks that they haven’t been trained for, the extra workload it will put on doctors supervising them, and the lack of clear regulatory oversight of their role. It’s time to pause the recruitment of more medical associate professionals until doubts around regulation and supervision are worked…
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