Responding to the publication of the RCP's interim guidance for PAs, Prof Phil Banfield, chair of BMA council, said:

"The issuing of this guidance by the Royal College of Physicians is further evidence that the Government and NHS England must bring in urgent interim safety measures to protect all patients while the Leng review is carried out. The concerns of doctors voiced by an increasing number of medical Royal Colleges and the BMA should not be ignored.  It is no longer tenable that these roles can continue as if nothing has happened. The NHS likes to talk the talk on listening to safety concerns, now it must walk the walk.  

"The guidance backs up the work the BMA has done to provide a clear scope for PAs that avoids blurring the line between doctors and assistant roles. For instance, the RCP agrees with us that no PA should be seeing patients without a high level of immediately available supervision. This is something we made very clear earlier this year in our own scope of practice, setting out that PAs should see only those patients already triaged or assessed by an appropriately experienced doctor and under the close supervision of one.

"As the RCP says, the planned expansion of PAs across the NHS needs to be rethought. But in the short term, while the Leng review is underway, and potentially unsafe practice continues across the NHS, we must pause PA recruitment, and ensure those we have practise to their qualification and not beyond. You don't fly a plane under safety review, you ground it".

Notes to editors