What if your ‘physician’ wasn’t actually a doctor at all? Beware this new reckless experiment | Rachel Clarke

The NHS says it's not trying to replace qualified doctors with physician associates. But we can see the terrifying truth

Something radical, precipitous and sweeping is under way in the NHS. It's untried, untested and sorely lacking in evidence, with the potential to cause significant patient harm. I'm talking about the Department of Health and Social Care's project to rapidly expand so-called medical associate professions (MAPs), the largest group of which are termed physician associates (PAs). None of these groups have a medical degree, nor postgraduate medical training. But their deployment in our health service is billed as essential" workforce planning - the only way to address rising patient demand and a desperate shortage of trained medics.

Last week marked a new and depressingly low point for doctors, like me, who believe this project to be one of the most singularly dishonest, duplicitous and downright reckless political responses to the NHS workforce crisis. We discovered that a large NHS body - the Bradford District and Craven health and care partnership, responsible for the health and care needs of 2.4 million people - appeared to be breaking the law by producing posters that misrepresented physician associates as doctors to its patient population. The physician will see you now" stated the posters. But the member of staff featured and explicitly described as a physician in Bradford" was no such thing. In place of a five-year medical degree, they had a truncated, two-year physician associate degree.

Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic