How will expansion of physician associates affect patient safety?

Too often what seems like a good idea turns out not to be. The NHS is facing a staffing crisis. It has over 120 000 vacancies and almost three quarters of employees think that their organisation has insufficient staff.1 There are concerns that the NHS is entering a downward spiral as departures increase pressure on those left to unsustainable levels.Those in charge are taking drastic and highly controversial action.2 Medical school places are expanding, although where the necessary infrastructure, trainers, or clinical placements will come from is unclear.3 New occupations, like physician associates (PAs), are being created. Yet this development has proven highly controversial, for many reasons.4 One is concern about patient safety, with increasing examples of misdiagnosis of patients by physician associates. However, at this point, these are individual cases, so it is unclear whether there is a larger problem. Intuitively, providing additional staff to support teams that are…
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