Physician/GP associates

What is a physician associate?

Physician associates (PAs) are healthcare professionals with a generalist medical education, who work alongside doctors, physicians, GPs and surgeons providing medical care as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team. Physician associates are dependent practitioners working with a dedicated supervisor, but are able to work autonomously with appropriate support.

What do physician associates do? Physician associates work within a defined scope of practice and limits of competence.

They can:

• take medical histories from patients
• carry out physical examinations
• see patients with undifferentiated diagnoses
• see patients with long-term chronic conditions
• formulate differential diagnoses and management plans
• perform diagnostic and therapeutic procedures
• develop and deliver appropriate treatment and management plans
• request and interpret diagnostic studies (except those involving ionising radiation)
• provide health promotion and disease prevention advice for patients

Physician associates are not able to:

• prescribe
• request ionising radiation (eg chest X-ray or CT scan)
• provide care or treatments to patients in an unsupervised setting.