Less than a third of GPs prepared to employ physician assistants

The poll of more than 450 GPs across the UK found that only 32 per cent of practices would be prepared to employ physician assistants while over 40 per cent ruled out any possibility of hiring them. GPs said that the scheme, designed to alleviate GPs’ workloads in a cost-effective way, could in fact cause huge problems for practices and claimed that the lack of medical training that physician assistants received was a cause for concern, adding that there was little evidence to prove that the scheme would save cash.

Less than a month after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that there would be 1,000 new physician assistants working in general practice by 2020 as part of the ‘new deal’ to alleviate the GP workforce crisis, the findings further highlights concerns with the Hunt’s plans.

Dr Zishan Syed, a GP in Kent, said: “Physician assistants have not sat the essential components of the assessment trainees have to pass in order to become GPs.  It is an unacceptable threat to patient safety to allow other professionals to work in GP-like roles without doing these assessments.”

Dr Simon Gilbert, a GP at Cricket Green Medial Practice which has been employing physician assistants since 2008, defended Hunt’s plans saying that if the skills sets and experience were understood, physician assistants could work well in a practice environment.

He said: “Our current PA does see unselected and acute patients but also spends a lot of time seeing patients with known diagnoses, doing much of the daily home visit list and reviewing patients recently out of hospital. Physician assistant’s clinical skills are valuable where there may be less time pressure to rapidly assess and prescribe.”

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