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GP surgery using Physician Associates

Posted By waltztf79

"GP surgery using Physician Associates"

About: The Lawson Practice

(as a service user),

I have been with the Lawson Practice for many years however have recently found out that sadly the practice are now employing Physician Associates. This is an issues as when booking to speak with a GP, calls are being taken by Physician Associates instead - not at the request of the patients.

A recent BBC Panorama Investigation highlighted the over-reliance on Physician Associates and their unwarranted use as GP substitutes and the Investigation raised many concerns, causing the Quality Care Commission to launch their own investigation.

The GP commentators questioned whether this  business model was not posing real safety risks for patients, with PAs being used wrongly as cheap substitutes for trained GPs

My experience with dealing with a Physician Associate at The Lawson Practice has led to a wrong / incorrect referral being made, which has caused delays in obtaining diagnostics.

This has led to more calls happening between the Practice and myself, further appointments made to speak with a GP - This creates unnecessary pressures on the service and does not cut down on wait times or free up appointments.

I feel this this is an example of profit being put before care.

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Responses

Response from Deborah Colvin, GP, The Lawson Practice, The Lawson Practice nearly 2 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Deborah Colvin
GP, The Lawson Practice,
The Lawson Practice

Submitted on 27/07/2022 at 15:55
Published on Care Opinion at 16:56

Thank you so much for your feedback. I take issue with your final sentence - 'an example of profit being put before care'. This is not why we have employed physicians associates. We would like to employ and to have enough GPs to look after everybody. I don't know whether you are aware of the huge shortfall in GPs at the moment? We have had advertisements out for GPs and had no responses. We have to have a big enough team to look after all our patients. Physicians associates can be used safely as long as they are not seen as doctor replacements as they are not doctors and do not have a doctors training. However they have lots of skills that can support patient care, we just need to be sure that we are giving them appropriate roles and tasks and supervising appropriately. It sounds as if this didn't happen in your case but without knowing who you are we can't learn from this. It would be enormously helpful to us if you felt able to come and speak to me or one of the managers about this. In this way we can learn and improve and ensure that the physicians associates are seeing people for the right sorts of things. I really hope you are able to do this and would truly welcome a face to face discussion.

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