What are Physician associates (PAs)

Physician associates (PAs) are healthcare professionals with a generalist medical education
who work alongside doctors and surgeons providing medical care as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team. PAs work under the supervision of a doctor but can work autonomously with appropriate support. The first PAs were formally introduced in 2003.

What do physician associates do?

PAs are trained to work within a defined scope of practice and limits of competence to perform the following duties:

• taking medical histories from patients
• carrying out physical examinations
• seeing patients with undifferentiated diagnoses
• seeing patients with long-term chronic conditions
• formulating differential diagnoses and management plans
• carrying out diagnostic and therapeutic procedures
• developing and delivering appropriate treatment and management plans
• requesting and interpreting diagnostic studies
• providing health promotion and disease prevention advice for patients.

However, currently PAs are not able to:

• prescribe
• request ionising radiation (eg chest X-ray or CT scan).

What training and qualifications do physician associates have?

PAs trained in the UK have undertaken postgraduate medical training in PA studies. These studies are spread over a period of at least 90 weeks (approximately 3,200 hours, divided into 1,600 hours of theory and 1,600 hours of clinical practice).

This is an intensive two-year course based on the Competence and Curriculum Framework for the PA, consisting of theoretical learning in medical sciences, pharmacology and clinical reasoning, as well as clinical placement experience in a wide variety of settings.

To enrol on a PA programme, students must already hold an undergraduate degree, usually in a biomedical or health/ life science field and have some prior health or social care experience.