General Medical Council changed rules to allow ‘associates’ to be exempt from national standards and trusts to set own local standards
A group of anaesthetists under the name of Anaesthetists United (AU) has announced today that it has engaged leading legal firm Bindmans to take the General Medical Council (GMC) to court for allowing unqualified ‘doctors’ – so called ‘physician associates’ (PAs) and ‘anaesthetist associates’ (AAs) whose role is used to extend NHS privatisation and help private medical providers – and the Royal College of Physicians – to make bigger profits, to be confused with doctors.
The roles have also been used to avoid national standards, allowing local health boards effectively to use the roles how they wish. At least two patients, who thought they were being treated by fully-qualified doctors, have died as a result of misdiagnoses by PAs that led to no treatment being given for dangerous conditions.
The government used a backdoor ‘statutory instrument’ to push through recent changes to widen and relax the use of PAs and AAs – opposed only by independent MP Claudia Webbe. Labour then colluded with the Tories to defeat an attempt by Green and independent peers to block the legislation in the House of Lords. Actual medical professionals are horrified at the threat to patients and AU is now taking action.
The group says that the GMC is abusing the term ‘medical professionals’ to include undertrained PAs and AAs as doctors. The legal action crowdfunder explains:
The General Medical Council was given powers under the Medical Act 1983 to regulate doctors and protect the public from those falsely claiming to be qualified when they are not. But instead, we have watched with dismay as doctors are quietly being replaced by ‘Associates’. Worse still, the GMC appears to be actively encouraging this.
We’ve listened to empty reassurances from the establishment, as the lines between the two professions have been systematically blurred.
We think patients deserve better; they should be cared for by doctors when necessary, should know who is and is not a doctor, and there should be separate regulation underpinning this.
And we’re ready to take action.
What are Physician/Anaesthesia Associates?
Physician Associates and Anaesthesia Associates are a new profession. They are not doctors, they do not have the same training as doctors, but are being permitted to take on many of the roles doctors have traditionally fulfilled. The press have reported on troubling cases. And the General Medical Council, the body legally responsible for doctors’ regulation, has now been given the responsibility of regulating Physician/Anaesthesia Associates too.
(To make it more confusing, an “Associate Specialist” is an experienced doctor.)
So how have they blurred the distinction between Doctors and Associates
Parliament originally made it clear that Associates were to be kept entirely separate from doctors. There should never have been any ambiguity as to who or what a health worker is. But instead, the GMC has made the situation vague and indistinct.
The biggest worry is that the GMC have steadfastly refused to say what an Associate can, or cannot, do to support patients. The precise term for this is their ‘scope of practice’. The GMC have even refused to hold a consultation on it, despite a statutory requirement for them to do so.
So it is left entirely down to market forces to determine scope. This favours using Physician/Anaesthesia Associates as doctor replacements. There is no good reason for this ambiguity: in comparison, the General Dental Council has strict rules on the difference between dentists, hygienists, technicians and the other professions that they regulate.
Worse still, the GMC has confusingly started to use the term ‘Medical Professionals’ to encompass both doctors and Associates. It has even issued guidance on ‘Good Medical Practice’ for both doctors and Associates to share.
We believe the GMC is simply ignoring the law on professional regulation.
You can read our legal case in more detail here.
What are we trying to achieve?
- Clear and enforceable guidance from the GMC on the ‘privileges of members’ admitted to Associate practice, defining what they can and cannot do (their Scope of Practice) and clear rules on levels of supervision. This can be delegated to the appropriately-empowered Medical College/Faculty.
- The current ‘Good Medical Practice’ guidance replaced by two separate sets of guidance for the two separate professions, and
- An end to the use of the ambiguous term ‘Medical Professionals’ used to describe two separate groups misleadingly.
What have we done so far?
On 26th March we wrote to the GMC setting out our case. In their reply they answered some of our points but completely failed to address others. We feel that the only route left open to us is a legal one, and we have had expressions of interest from some top lawyers in the field.
How much money do we need?
We have been quoted the sum of £15,000 to cover the initial costs of a brief and opinion.
We are working with John Halford of Bindmans LLP, a public law solicitor with experience in the regulatory framework on protected titles, and Tom de la Mare KC of Blackstones. Both of these are highly regarded and respected in their expertise; we need to work with the best.
It is quite possible that a strongly-worded representations from top lawyers will be sufficiently forceful to push the GMC into accepting our proposals. But if not, then the next step is court action. We don’t yet know how much that will cost, although we do know that the GMC has a reputation for spending large sums of public money on defending themselves.
Who are we?
Anaesthetists United are a group of Anaesthetists of all grades.
Anaesthetists have a reputation for getting things done. We are the group that convened the Extraordinary General Meeting of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, which led to a sea change in the way the medical profession, and the public, have looked at the whole issue of Associates. You can read more about us as a group, and details of our core members, here.
The GMC was set up so that the public could tell who was and was not a doctor. That aim is now being undermined. We urge doctors and patients to come together and fund a legal challenge to restore faith and ensure that patient safety is never compromised.
Thank you.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
We’re gonna need REAL anaesthetists under Labour because ‘Britain will be fit to fight within the first year of a Labour government’ – Keir Starmer
Increasing military spending, ongoing arms sales to Israel and a shoehorn for Britain’s next generation nuclear weapons. Labour-under-Starmer’s telling us that Junior Doctors’ wage catch-up demands and a properly resourced NHS, medically qualified anaesthetists and GPs are unaffordable.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-will-be-fit-to-fight-within-the-first-year-of-a-labour-government
The only main political Party in England to support a publicly own NHS is the Greens.
Then the candidates of Collective and the Workers Party, also support a publicly owned NHS.
Collective is only standing candidates in a few seats that the Greens or the Workers Party have not a chance to win.
Hence, the Greens and the Workers Party should not file candidates against Claudia Webbe, Pamela Fiztpatrick, Leanne Mohamed, Andrew Feinstein and the other Collective candidates; at total of 11 and with good socialist credentials.
The Workers Party should not stand candidates against Green candidates in seat that they could challenge Labour and win the seats. A few votes here and there for the Workers Party could make the difference between having a Labour MP or a Green MP. I rather have a Green MP.
I’d rather have a qualified anaesthetist putting me under than some clown with a bottle of scotch, or one of those little silver tubes of nitrous oxide that the kids sniff, or a mallet to hit me over the head with…That’s the way things’ll be going, soon enough.
Those who won’t hear, will feel❕
Won’t hear❔ WILL feel❕❕
REFUSE to hear, HEED, learn and CHANGE❓❓❓ Then feel❗️
Some are feeling now … REAPING the FRUITS of their sustained REFUSAL to be self-respecting DYNAMIC adults, and the sour fruits of pathetic timorousness and repeated appeasements, and the incomprehensible perpetual hope that those who have shown REPEATEDLY and CLEARLY what they have ALWAYS been and ARE, will somehow be something-else.
Those who refuse to take action against the obvious, will have the obvious unleashed on them.
The predictable, and predicted, the obvious, will only surprise those who pride themselves on handing over our party to the OBVIOUS Tory B side gang on silver platters, and call it “decency” and “integrity”.
❌🥀🛢️❌🥀🛢️❌🥀🛢️
Even on its own terms this jingoistic policy approach of Herr Starmer on behalf of an incompetent and flailing political class and its oligarch owners is simply more alternate reality nonsense with no practical efficacy.
Thanks to this bunch of clueless numpties of a political class the UK , along with the rest of its counterparts across the Collective West, no longer has either the necessary industrial capacity nor economic ability to meet whatever objectives – if any coherent objectives actually exist – this is designed to achieve.
Any realistic and practical outcome will certainly take a lot longer than twelve months. Even on that timescale it will certainly be far too late to affect the outcome of Project Ukraine – which is already lost as planning for the next installment of forever war is signalled from the Sauron’s eye that is MIC Washington.
Besides which, to be effective you need decision makers at every level throughout society who actually know their arse from a hole in the ground – as anyone who has studied the arguments and analysis of those such Andrei Martyanov will attest.
As the policy over the past several decades in this tiny part of the planet known as the Collective West has been to systemically purge anyone and everyone with the necessary wherewithal – because they won’t stick to the one true doctrine of The Official Narrative – good luck with that.
As Andrew Bridgen MP noted in a recent interview the UK, along with the rest of the Collective West, has no defence against maneuverable hyper sonic ordinance. Living in their own fantasy narrative of “nuclear deterrance” the reality is yet to permeate our political and media classes – if it ever will – that this is obsolete. The Russians already have first strike capability;
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/06/01/first-strike-capable-why-russia-is-indifferent-to-damage-to-one-or-another-ground-based-radar-installation/
“No one in the West talks about the implications of what the Russians have developed and in particular what it means in the present context of concern that the poor, blinded Russians do not get early warning of a nuclear attack. Let me say it out loud: the Russians have first nuclear strike capability thanks to their newly introduced Sarmat missiles carrying smaller, unstoppable hypersonic missiles as payload. A fully loaded Sarmat can level to the ground a country the size of the UK; several of them can fairly well erase the USA from the map. In addition the Russians have short to medium range hypersonic missiles that can be launched from frigates 400 km off America’s shores. And they are working on a nuclear torpedo (Poseidon) that alone can take out entire cities in the tsunamis they create.”
As former French Foreign Minister and Secretary-General of the French presidency under President Mitterrand, Hubert Védrine, observes:
“the most profound and important question facing the West; Is it capable to “accept alterity – one that can live with others and accept them for who they are … a West that is not proselytizing, and not interventionist?” …..We are not going to become the bosses of ‘the world that’s coming’. So we are forced to think beyond; we are forced to envision a new relationship for the future between the Western world and the famous global South”.
“And what happens if we can’t get to accept this? Then we’ll continue being marginalized – increasingly cut from the rest of the world – and increasingly despised for our misplaced sense of superiority”.
Yesterday’s Men – as the aptly named musical band ‘Madness’ sang about all those years ago.
We deserve better than any of this shower of shite on offer.
Good for AU!!
In other news (sorry folks) Darren Rodwell**, PPC for barking (the seat maggot hodge’s vacating – and not before time ) has been suspended from running following an investigation into improper behaviour
**IIRC rodwell was the one who said he had ” the worst tan possible for a blackman” man…Not sure its about that though, I only caught a bit of it on the news.
…A quick Google search shows he’s involved in a sexual harassment claim.
Apparently he’s been the match with keef, too.
It WAS rodwell made that racist remark…
So, racist AND under investigation for sexual harassment…exactly the type keef harbours. Wonder how long it’ll take to clear him so he can run?? 😙🎶
Toffee, the news is that Rodwell has been removed from the Endorsement List.
After Labour deselecting Faiza Shaheen, I am afraid Starmer cannot afford to keep Rodwell as a candidate, the Black and Asian vote labour is counting all would have been very much reduced has Rodwell being allowed to stand.
Also – shock, horror! he was cleared by the NEC for the tan remark.
But then…
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/labour-candidate-endorsement-removed
The BBC also reported on Monday that Rodwell had asked police in 2022 not to respond if they were contacted by a resident he was planning to confront at their home.
The council leader claimed he used official systems to find the address of the person who had threatened him online
A clear breach of GDPR if I’m not mistaken….
AND ‘criticised’ for attaching a “Darren Rodwell for Barking” banner on gravestones at his campaign launch event in October last year.
Lovely bloke… 😒
Just thought on….doesn’t keef want ten years for those desecrating memorials?? 🤔
AND….rodwell didn’t do it as part of a protest, but as an incitement to vote for him….which is tantamount to an incitement to condone that sort of behaviour – behaviour that keef deems criminal.
I agree in this case, keef. You gonna call for the max penalty??
Or does he get exonerated for that, too?
Assuming this is not already the case, perhaps Herr Starmer could suggest this policy to the Dutch who, in the spring of 2022, had one of their war cemeteries targeted in such a manner…..
https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/6198767/oorlogsmonumenten-in-nijmegen-beklad-met-anti-russische-leuzen.html
…..by people and their supporters who, according to some self-styled ‘experts’, don’t actually exist.*
*Even though three of their number were honoured guests in the UK Parliament only a few weeks ago showing off their Nazi era emblems with a former UK Prime Minister.