Physician associates: GMC makes only small changes to regulation after consultation

The General Medical Council has made only minor changes to how it will regulate physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs) from 13 December, after a consultation that received more than 3000 responses.

The GMC said that many of the responses to the consultation, which launched in March,12 were outside the scope of the consultation or already settled in law. In its report the GMC provided a detailed summary of the feedback it received to the technical consultation.3

The main changes the regulator has made to PA and AA regulation in response to the consultation were:

• Training providers must ensure that student PAs and AAs inform patients when they are involved in their care

• Two case examiners will make decisions on fitness to practise cases, rather than a single GMC case examiner, because of concerns about the risk of biased decision making, and

• The list of behaviours that indicate a high level of seriousness will include cases where a PA or AA deliberately misled patients or others about their registration status.

Among those who responded to the consultation were 1909 doctors, 385 PAs and AAs, and 81 …