Physician associates should not diagnose patients, says BMA guidance

Physician associates (PAs) must be barred from diagnosing patients or from claiming to be “one of the medical team” without stating their job title, say new guidelines1 from the BMA.

The BMA says the new national guidance is the first document to clarify suitable tasks for medical associate professionals (MAPs)—including PAs and anaesthesia associates (AAs)—and those that they should never carry out under any circumstances. It is written “by doctors for doctors, to address the uncertainty caused by the lack of a defined safe scope of practice and for patients who we know are confused by these roles,” Phil Banfield, BMA chair of council, said at its launch this week.

The guidelines recommend MAPs work using a traffic light system, with green indicating a task they can do alone, amber meaning they need supervision, …