Physician assistants in English primary care teams: A survey.

Ensuring that healthcare teams have a mix of skilled professionals to meet patient needs and deliver safe and cost-effective services is a major imperative in all health services. The health services in the UK, like a number of other countries, have been exploring the contribution that physician assistants (PAs) can make to healthcare teams including primary care. PAs are well established in the USA, where they have a recognized qualification and undertake physical examinations, investigations, diagnosis, treatment and prescribing within their scope of practice as agreed with their supervising doctor. The first UK-trained PAs graduated in 2009 from post-graduate courses, which are modeled closely on those in the USA to a UK agreed set of competencies and curriculum. There is evidence of the substantive employment of PAs in primary care teams in England. The UK has a well-developed primary care system, with most care delivered via general practice teams which generally include a mix of medical, nursing and support staff. The extent of the employment of PAs in primary care in the England and their contribution within the team to patient care is unknown. This paper reports on a survey that investigated these questions