A health board has apologised after posting a job advert for a physician associate (PA) which mentioned ‘supervision of junior doctors’ among the duties the role would cover.
NHS Highland was looking for a PA to join the medical team at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, Scotland, and its advert said that the PA would ‘actively undertake clinical supervision of ward nursing staff, junior doctors and student PAs’.
However, PAs are not currently allowed to provide clinical supervision. They are responsible for their actions and decisions but their supervising doctors are ultimately responsible for the patient.
The job description originally said: ‘You will provide high quality, safe and effective clinical and emergency care in conjunction with other members of the clinical teams.
‘You will have the opportunity to participate in all aspects of the patient pathway including; initial assessment and triage, continuing inpatient care and ambulatory care settings.
‘The PA will actively undertake clinical supervision of ward nursing staff, junior doctors and student PAs to facilitate the development of clinical skills and practice. Post holders will be expected to be ambassadors for the PA profession.’
NHS Highland said it was ‘very sorry’ as the job description had been ‘posted in error’, and that recruitment for the role would be paused. An updated job description is still online but the website says the closing date for application has passed.
A spokesperson for the board told Pulse: ‘We are very sorry that this inaccurate job description was posted in error.
‘Clinical and educational supervision are GMC-recognised roles, and a non-registered member of staff including a physician associate cannot provide clinical supervision.
‘The advert will be paused and updated to reflect this. We are reviewing all job descriptions for physicians associates to ensure they comply with appropriate specifications.’
BMA Scotland said it understood the concern caused and that despite the suggestion from the board that this was an error, it is looking into the matter and raising it urgently through local representatives.
Earlier this year, an ICS social media post encouraging patients to see PAs at their GP practice for persistent abdominal pain sparked criticism among ongoing controversy around the roles.
In a now-deleted post on X, Norfolk and Waveney ICS said that PAs can help with this symptom as they are ‘highly skilled at diagnosing conditions’.
The post was then raised in a House of Commons debate used it as an example to show that growing the NHS workforce via PAs is not safe.
Last week a BMA survey found that he majority of doctors believe that the way PAs work ‘present a significant risk to patient safety’.
Legislation to allow the GMC to regulate the role was laid before Parliament via affirmative statutory instruments last week and the regulations are expected to come into force at the end of 2024.
PAs will get a seven-digit reference number with an alphabetical prefix in order to distinguish them from doctors but the Government said it has no intention to change their title to avoid patient confusion.
Could this be a sign that there are now so many different roles, jobs in NHSE nowadays with little understanding of who does what by administrators, and even what administrators themselves roles should be, and even by clinicians themselves? Also so many different acronyms or abbreviations some of which have dual meanings; with new roles, jobs and acronyms being added all the time. Talk about complexity, and that’s before you even get down to the nitty gritty of actual patient management . Perhaps the PA job ad compiler had little understanding as nobody in the NHS had taken the time to explain this job to them;
a role which in some ways is still under development, as illustrated by new GMC reg numbers for PAs.
If a hospital HR person does not realise that a Physician Associate is not a regulated health professional and not the same as an Associate specialist, there is no chance the general public will understand their non doctor role.
Error my @…..
No doubt the cheer leading managing partners with a cohort of salaried serfs will be along to tell us how these “colleagues” are valued members of the clinical team. Shame on them and all the other lickspittles colluding with government to deprofessionalize medicine and try to pull the wool over the eyes of the public that they are seeing a doctor, when they aren’t. Don’t train them, don’t supervise them,don’t support them as you can be sure they will want the proper doctor to take the rap for their poor decision making ( based on lack of training and experience)
Why not? I am sure my PA understands more, or at least able to act like they do, about health than all local mental health, pain clinic, paediatric, gastroenterology and…, it’s a long list, specialists
No-one including this Health Board understands what PAs are. What a mess.
The TRUTH wii out!
Michael is right. Do not train them. They should go to medical school like all of us if they want to do medicine. You can already see the sinister plan to de-professionalize doctors.
Why bother going to Med School: just do a so called Masters to train as a PA, get paid as much as a salaried GP, who supervises you and caries all the clinical and medicolegal responsibility.
PAs need to be barred from private practice, otherwise they will hive that off as well.
PCNs have led this drive to introduce lesser qualified cheaper staff and unless the BMA succeeds in the plans ( as far as I understand) to object to highly these insidious, wasteful and extremely destructive PCN groups, then in my opinion the relentless decline and dismantling of General Practice will continue.