BMA to financially support joint legal challenge against GMC over PAs

[holyshedballs]

pulsetoday.co.uk/news/regul...

The BMA will financially support Anaesthetists United’s legal case challenging the GMC on its failure to ‘properly distinguish’ between qualified doctors and physician associates (PAs).

The legal case is aiming to achieve ‘clear and enforceable guidance’ defining what PAs and anaesthesia associates (AAs) ‘can and cannot do’.

Last month, the Doctors’ Association UK made a ‘significant donation’ of £30,000 to the AU’s legal case, saying it ‘underscores the medical profession’s deep-seated concerns over patient safety and professional standards’.

And two bereaved families joined the case, including the family of Emily Chesterton, a 30-year-old patient at a North London GP practice who died at the end of 2022 after seeing a PA.

Now the BMA has said it will provide an indemnity to protect the AU and the Chestertons from the risk of financial loss arising from issuing the claim.

It is also calling on the Government to confirm it will not use public money to support the GMC in its defence of the case.

BMA chair of council Prof Philip Banfield said: ‘We stand alongside the grassroots campaigners at AU as they too seek to ensure patient safety in the UK is not watered down by the headlong rush to expand the role of the physician associate.

‘Doctors are standing together to protect their patients and ensure that high quality healthcare continues to be provided in the NHS.

‘The tragic case of Emily Chesterton, among others, should by now have made clear that blurring the lines between doctors and their assistants can have fatal consequences.

‘It is unconscionable that despite so many warnings from medical professionals the GMC has forged ahead with its attempt to regulate PAs and AAs in a manner that encourages that blurring.

‘AA’s case is very clear: if you don’t set out clearly what a PA can do and can’t do in a scope of practice then you have failed to carry out your duties as a regulator.

‘The GMC enforces postgraduate training and practice for doctors but tells us that such enforcement for PAs and AAs should be left to individual employers.

‘That is an abdication of responsibility that will lead to unscrupulous and possible illegal practice within hospital trusts and general practice, as we have already seen.’

Dr Richard Marks, co-founder of Anaesthetists United, said: ‘We are pleased to say that the BMA has offered us crucial financial support to help our legal fight over PAs and AAs.

‘We are deeply grateful for their help and recognition of how vital this is to healthcare in the UK.

‘While the assistance is vital in enabling us to continue our fight, we remain significantly short of the funds required to see this case through to the end.

[Regenallotment Ambassador]

I saw this in the Guardian today too. I can’t believe their work isn’t regulated already. Massive area of risk ⚠️

Thanks for posting, this article has more nuance from the professionals standpoint 🌱

[arTistapple in reply to Regenallotment]

I can’t help being a little cynical about this. Doctors are so protected right now. No wonder, apart from all the obvious issues ⚠️they don’t want their protection perhaps diluted by less well paid practitioners.

Ok yes I am more than a little cynical!

So many causes being taken up re: NHS at the moment. So may ‘heedless’ things happening. Straw clutching and brain cells constantly being removed. Who knows maybe PAs might be more interested in what they are doing than doctors?

[holyshedballs in reply to arTistapple]

My own view is that the BMA is doing its job and trying to protect the doctors profession, in its own way. I think they are being like a dog in a manger. there aren't enough doctors but they are not willing to allow more doctors to be trained in a misguided effort to maintain the exclusivity and mystique of the profession.

A lot, but absolutely not all, of what most GPs and some junior doctors do is day to day bread and butter that does not need such highly trained people to carry out these tasks, in my view. Properly trained and supervised staff are essential to see patients, deal with the aforementioned day to day bread and butter cases and recognise when a patient needs more specialist care.

The NHS is in crisis, and we need some way to get patients seen and treated in reasonable time periods. PAs could be a reasonable way to fill that gap. but as I have said on another post, my real preference is for a vast increase in Advanced Nurse Practitioners, but they cost as much as doctors.

[SilverAvocado]

I agree with others in being conflicted about this. I think some of the problems patients experience are because doctors are on too much of a pedestal.

I've often thought I'd love to see someone in my consultant's office who is less highly paid, so they can spend more time with me. Then perhaps have a bit more of a holistic view - for example someone who could have supported me a bit more through discovering I was disabled after thyroid cancer. Or recently I had a surgical wound from a minor procedure open up and get infected. The surgical team just discharged me back to my GP to deal with it, and the surgeon himself could not have cared less.

I've always just fantasised about a more junior person who could hold some of these threads together because they aren't constantly rushing through.