Updated December 2024
The Society for Acute Medicine (SAM) is a proudly multidisciplinary organisation with members from several different professional backgrounds. We aim to support them all to deliver the highest standards of care for acutely unwell adult medical patients.
In several Acute Medical Units, Physician Associates (PAs) have become established team members helping to support the delivery of this care. The majority of in-hours acute medical care is consultant-led, which allows these PAs to always work with appropriate senior support. This consultant supervision is an important part of safe care delivery, and we expect all PAs within Acute Medicine to receive this level of consultant oversight.
SAM acknowledges that a defined role and scope of practice will be hugely beneficial. We are working to develop this for our speciality, and our members are actively contributing to ongoing work by the RCP into national scopes of practice. All PAs working within Acute Medicine must continue to work within their agreed scopes of practice pending these nationally approved documents.
It is imperative that the integration of any new roles into Acute Medical departments are complementary to established team members, and do not adversely affect their training, experience, or ability to work within the team. The training of, and support for, all members of the multidisciplinary team will always be a priority for the Society, and any new roles should explicitly support this.
We are acutely aware of the pressures facing urgent care services in the NHS and the suboptimal conditions many of our members face when trying to deliver the highest standards of care. Where existing acute medical team members feel unsupported or undervalued, it is imperative that local leaders seek to correct this as a matter of urgency. The Society has an active medical resident doctor membership, and we routinely seek their feedback to ensure we are supporting them in whichever ways we can. We would encourage any members with a view on this issue they wish us to hear to contact us directly.
These are important issues which affect a number of practicing clinicians, alongside those in training who have already committed themselves to their future career choice. We will continue to steadfastly support PAs wishing to pursue a career within Acute Medicine, within the scope of practice that their training and experience allows. The conversation must remain open, honest and professional and we deplore any attempts to drag the debate away from these principles.
We look forward to continuing to contribute to this important conversation and supporting the whole MDT to deliver the highest quality of care possible. We also welcome news of the recently announced review by Professor Gillian Leng, and will look to have an input regarding PAs in Acute Medicine.