A message from GMC Chair Professor Dame Carrie MacEwen
The legislation that underpins our role and what we do is changing. At the end of this year, we’ll become a multiprofessional regulator for the first time since 1956, when the General Dental Council took on full responsibility for the regulation of dentists.
Much has changed across society, medicine and patient care since then. Change can be hard, especially when it takes place at an already unsettling and challenging time.
While there are undoubtedly differences of opinion about the role that physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs) play in the UK’s health services, I believe there is a common goal and motivation – to promote patient safety and to ensure public confidence in those delivering care.
Regulation will help assure patients, colleagues and employers that PAs and AAs are appropriately educated and qualified, can contribute safely and appropriately to the care of patients, and can be held to account if serious concerns are raised. This is the underlying purpose of regulation, for doctors, for other healthcare professionals and, in the future, for PAs and AAs too.
As a multiprofessional regulator we will recognise and regulate doctors, PAs and AAs as three distinct professions. PAs and AAs don’t have the same knowledge, skills and expertise as doctors. They are not doctors, and they can’t replace them. They can however play important roles within multidisciplinary teams. Our approach to regulation reflects this.
We are listening and have responded to feedback about how we will regulate in the future, and we will continue to do so. We agree that it's vital for patients to know who is caring for them. That’s why the professional standards say that PAs and AAs will have a responsibility to clearly communicate who they are and their role in the team, just as doctors must do now. We’ve also announced that the reference number that PAs and AAs will be given when they gain registration will have a short alphabetical prefix. And we’ll make sure that registration information displayed on our website will make it easy to identify individual registrants, and to tell if they’re a doctor, PA or AA.
Our next step will be to consult on the rules, standards and guidance needed to implement the new legislation and regulation of PAs and AAs.
We are also using this consultation as an opportunity to help improve our regulatory processes for doctors, so we’ll also seek views on proposed changes to our existing fitness to practise decision making principles.
We’ll write to you when the consultation opens and let you know how you can take part. You can also help shape our work to implement reforms by signing up to join our connect and change community of interest for frequent updates and opportunities to get involved.
These changes are taking place while broader concerns are being raised about patient backlogs, workforce retention, the model of postgraduate training and trainer capacity. You have my commitment that we will continue to work with partners across all four countries of the UK, including employers, the medical royal colleges, the BMA and others to address these challenges, for the benefit of patients, doctors and the wider multidisciplinary team.
This is a year of flux, but I am hopeful about the path ahead. The legislation that introduces regulation of PAs and AAs also lays the groundwork for future changes to our regulatory framework for doctors, which will enable us to be more responsive, flexible and better able to support good practice.
I do recognise there are strongly held views about these changes, but it’s at times of heightened tension that it becomes even more important for interactions to be respectful and constructive, whether online or face to face. We all want the same thing: to work in supportive environments that provide effective, safe patient care – we must work together to achieve that.
With all good wishes,
Carrie MacEwen
Chair of the General Medical Council
