Guide to the professional standards for physician associates and anaesthesia associates

What professional standards do I need to follow?

Once you register with us, you’ll need to followGood medical practice and the more detailed guidancewhich set out the principles, values and standards of professional behaviour expected of all doctors, physicians associates and anaesthesia associates registered with us.

Each piece of more detailed guidance expands on one or more of the principles in Good medical practice. For example paragraph 25 of Good medical practice states that you must be satisfied that you have consent before examining or treating patients, and more detail is given in guidance on Decision making and consent. And paragraphs 66-68 of Good medical practice describe what’s expected of someone delegating and someone being delegated to, and there’s more detail in guidance on Delegation and referral.

The professional standards in Good medical practice and the more detailed guidance provide a supportive framework to guide you when you’re caring for patients and working with colleagues.

All the professional standards apply to the extent that they’re relevant to your practice. You must use your professional judgement to apply them to the specific circumstances you face.

What the professional standards are not

How to use the professional standards

It’s your responsibility to be familiar with all the professional standards in Good medical practice and the more detailed guidance, wherever you practise, whatever your field or practice setting.

The professional standards apply to all our registrants, and we expect you to follow them, to the extent that they’re relevant to your practice. This means you work within the limits of your competence and follow the standards that are relevant to your practice. Any standards that are not relevant to your practice simply don’t apply: the standards themselves don’t permit you to deliver aspects of care that you are not qualified, trained, or legally entitled to do.

Professional standards support resources

Learning materials

We have a range of learning material to explain or show examples of professional standards working in practice.  These include case studies on the duty of candour, flow charts on confidentiality and Q&As on sustainability and AI. 

Ethical hub

We have ethical hub topics on a number of areas such as speaking up, racism in the workplace and older adults. The hub topics have been developed to show a way in which the professional standards can be applied in specific and challenging areas of care. This is done by:

• Setting out the relevant principles across the professional standards which relate to the area of care.
• Providing information and examples of how the professional standards can be applied.
• Linking to relevant external resources that also provide advice in the area of care.

How the professional standards relate to our fitness to practise process

The professional standards describe good practice, and not every departure from them will be considered serious.

When a concern is raised with us about a doctor, physician associate or anaesthesia associate, we must assess if that individual poses any current and ongoing risk to one or more of the three parts of public protection:

• protecting, promoting and maintaining the health, safety and wellbeing of the public
• promoting and maintaining public confidence in the medical professions, and
• promoting and maintaining proper professional standards and conduct for members of those professions.

We do this by considering the following.

• How serious the concern is. This includes considering the extent of the any departure from the professional standards expected and/or the impact of a medical professional’s health condition on their ability to practise safely. It also includes taking into account any specific factors that may impact on seriousness, such as premeditated or persistent behaviour, abuse of power, and whether the behaviour or poor performance the concern relates to is an isolated incident or has been repeated.
• Any relevant context that may impact on risk, for example systems factors and interpersonal factors in the medical professional’s working environment or their role and level of experience.
• How the medical professional responded to the concern, including evidence of insight and remediation.

Once we’ve assessed the risk, we’ll need to consider if regulatory action may be required in response to the concern. You can read more about our processes and the types of action we might need to take on our fitness to practise webpages.