Health Secretary Wes Streeting said there are “legitimate concerns” about the role of physician associates (PAs), amid concerns they are being used to replace fully qualified doctors.

He said he wanted to look at role issues before planning an expansion in the number of medical associates.

Streeting acknowledged there were concerns about the tasks being performed by personal assistants and transparency, with patients not necessarily realizing they were not being treated by a doctor.

PAs are graduates (usually with a health or life sciences degree) who have completed two years of postgraduate training.

Their role is to support doctors in the diagnosis and treatment of patients, and can be implemented in GP surgeries and hospitals.

There has been an ongoing debate within the NHS about the use of such roles, with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges calling for a review of PAs and anesthesia associates (AAs) to “clarify claims about their safety and usefulness in the roles.” facing the patient”. .

Streeting told BBC Breakfast: “I am taking these concerns seriously and have spent a lot of time listening to doctors and, by the way, fellow doctors too.

“I think they have a role to play and can add value, not least by freeing up doctors’ time to do things that only doctors can do.

“But I think there are legitimate concerns about the extent of physician substitution and the replacement of physicians with personal assistants, and there are issues around transparency.

“As patients, we need to know who we are seeing, who is in front of us and why, and we need to take those issues seriously.”

Streeting said he would say more about associate roles “in the coming weeks”, hinting that an expansion in the number of roles could be paused while work is done to address concerns.

Under the NHS long-term workforce plan, associate numbers will expand from around 3,500 today to 10,000 medical associates and 2,000 anesthesia associates by 2036/37.

Streeting said: “Before we step on the accelerator to expand the number of roles, I think we also need to take stock of where we are, delve into some of the challenges that the medical profession is giving us around the deployment of these roles, because I need to make sure, to be able to assure the country that we have the right people in the right place doing the right thing.”