Physician Associates: Radiology

(asked on 4th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to enable physician associates to authorise x-rays and related scans.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 10th January 2022

Statutory regulation should be used proportionately and only where risks to public and patient protection cannot be effectively addressed through other means of professional assurance. In 2017, the Department consulted on proposals to bring four medical associate professions into regulation:

- physician associate (PA);

- anaesthesia associate (AA);

- surgical care practitioner (SCP); and

- advanced critical care practitioner (ACCP).

In October 2018, we announced that PAs and AAs would be regulated but not SCPs or ACCPs. This is because training for SCPs and ACCPs is open to regulated healthcare professionals and therefore there is no direct entry route into these roles. Once trained, SCPs and ACCPs need to retain their base professional registration with their regulatory bodies in order to practise.

On 6 January 2022, we published a consultation on the criteria for determining when statutory regulation of a healthcare profession is appropriate.

The consultation will run for 12 weeks until 31 March 2022.

Whilst there is no legal requirement, all healthcare professions with prescribing responsibilities in the United Kingdom are regulated due to the high-risk nature of prescribing activities. Work to bring PAs into regulation is underway and the Department plans to consult on draft legislation later this year.

We are also working with the professions, NHS England and NHS Improvement, the devolved administrations and professional bodies to develop the case for extending appropriate prescribing responsibilities to PAs after regulation. Should the decision be made by the Commission on Human Medicines to extend prescribing responsibilities to the role, a separate legislative process would be required to implement this. This would be subject to a further public consultation.

The Department is not aware of any legislative reason why PAs cannot access advanced trauma training courses. Eligibility criteria for training courses is set by course providers. The Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations 2017 require a profession to be regulated before it can request X-rays and ionising radiation. Registered healthcare professionals can then request these procedures as ‘non-medical referrers’ (NMRs) provided they have been entitled as an NMR by their employer and have undergone the appropriate training.

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