House of Lords Debate - Physician and anaesthetist associate roles: review (5 December 2024)

Summary

This was a debate in the House of Lords on the 5 December 2024 considering what the review, announced by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 20 November, of the physician associate (PA) and anaesthetist associate (AA) roles will cover and what actions they plan to take in advance of the outcome.

Content

Key points raised by peers in this debate included:

• The remit of the review, and whether this should extend to consider the impact of the PA role on training opportunities for resident doctors and the “taskification” of medicine.
• With the Government having announced that the review will be published in spring 2025, wherever any interim measures will be put in place in the meantime to address patient safety concerns relating to PA and AA roles.
• A suggestion that it is time to pause the recruitment of PA and AA roles and to halt the expansion of their numbers, particularly until after the Government review reports.
• Concerns that individual cases have been cited to then equate the lack of patient safety with all PAs or AAs.
• The value of the NHS undertaking a refreshed national public campaign to raise awareness of PAs and what they do.

Responding to comments in the debate on behalf of the Government, Baroness Merron (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Patient Safety, Women's Health and Mental Health) stated the following points:

• The Government review will cover training, recruitment, day-to-day work, oversight, supervision and professional regulation. It will assess the safety of the PA and AA roles relative to existing professions, the contribution that the roles can make to more productive use of professional time in multidisciplinary teams and whether the roles deliver good-quality and efficient patient care in a range of settings.
• All the above matters, among others that peers have raised in this debate today, will be considered as part of the review.
• On interim action, she noted that NHS guidance remains in place on PA and AA deployment while the review is ongoing. Furthermore, NHS England continues to engage with NHS organisations to ensure that this guidance is adhered to.

You can watch the debate in full here.

Related reading

• Government launches independent review of Physician and Anaesthesia Associate professions (20 November 2024)
• Physician associates: What are the patient safety issues? An interview with Asif Qasim (12 November 2024)