Physician associates must have statutory regulation, says GMC head

Physician associates must be subject to statutory regulation, the chief executive of the General Medical Council (GMC) has said.

Speaking at the Medical Women’s Federation autumn conference in London on Friday 6 November, Niall Dickson said that the GMC hadn’t ruled out acting as the regulator of physician associates. “One thing we are absolutely convinced [about is] that physician associates must be regulated, they must come under statutory regulation,” he said. “People who are intervening and people who can prescribe absolutely need that.”

Dickson said this would provide protection for physician associates and for the doctors working with them. “We’re not going to jump up and down and say it has to be the GMC,” he said. “It might be the HCPC [Health and Care Professionals Council], but . . . statutory regulation [is needed]. If the four governments of the UK approached us and said, ‘We would like you to do it,’ we would look at it. So we will keep an open mind.”

He said that there were concerns about the number of physician associates being employed by Health Education England from abroad. “These people are coming in significant numbers. Health Education England are bringing them in from abroad, which again is another area of patient safety concern, because who knows what their training was, and so forth. Secondly, we will be training a lot more ourselves.”

However, Dickson said that the medical workforce landscape was changing quickly, and doctors needed to think about how they would work with new professional groups.

“There’s a huge opportunity for GPs in all of this,” he said. “It’s certainly not for me to dictate how it will happen. But my guess is that employers are absolutely going to be looking at how they can supplement areas such as general practice, where there are very significant shortages. There is a challenge to the profession about how [to] get on the front foot and make sure it’s the right set of relationships.”