The PDA recognises the similarities between the unwelcome use by the government and others of the terms ‘medical professionals’ in medicine, and ‘pharmacy professionals’ in pharmacy.
‘Medical professionals’ is being used to mean doctors and also PAs (physician associates) and AAs (anaesthesia associates). Meanwhile, ‘pharmacy professionals’ is being used by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), the NHS, and even the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) to mean pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. The roles being linked together under each of these terms are very different and patients must not be confused as to the role of any healthcare worker providing them with diagnosis, advice, or care.
The BMA has highlighted that physician and anaesthesia associates complete a two-year course rather than a five-year medical degree.
Similarly, the PDA has highlighted that pharmacy technicians have either completed an NVQ level 3 course or, in most cases were simply added to the GPhC register via a grandparenting route. Pharmacy technicians do not participate in a final registration assessment. Pharmacists must graduate from a four-year university MPharm course followed by a year of supervised foundation training and then must pass a final registration assessment. As a result, these two pharmacy roles have very different requirements for their underpinning knowledge, competence, and the final quality assurance process before registration.
Speaking at the BMA annual representative meeting, BMA council chair, Professor Philip Banfield said the association would not stand for the government and NHS leadership ‘eroding’ the profession any further. This statement comes after the GMC has been using the term ‘medical professionals’ in its materials to describe all its future registrants. Both doctors and associates after recent legislation allowed the GMC to also become the regulator of PAs and AAs from December 2024.
The BMA is now launching a judicial review claim against the GMC over its use of this term, which the association says should only ever be used to refer to qualified doctors.
Anaesthetists United, an independent group of grassroots anaesthetists, is planning separate but complementary legal action, which relates to the lack of any national regulation of scope of practice for PAs and AAs. The BMA is liaising with Anaesthetists United about this action.
Professor Philip Banfield said, “PAs are not doctors, and we have seen the tragic consequences of what happens when this is not made clear to patients. Everyone has the right to know who the healthcare professional they are seeing is and what they are qualified to do and crucially, not to do.
Doctors are ‘the medical profession’. To describe any other staff as medical professionals not only undermines doctors and the rigorous training journey they have been on, but also confuses patients, who rightly associate the two terms as one and the same.”
Co-founder of Anaesthetists United, Richard Marks said, “Doctors and their patients are united over their opposition to the outgoing government’s plans for replacing doctors with associates. Taking legal action seems to be the only way forward.”
The PDA has already written to the GPhC and the pharmacy minister setting out its patient safety concerns about the blurring of the lines between pharmacists and pharmacy technicians but has not received a satisfactory response.
More recently, the pharmacy minister, Dame Andrea Leadsom, was questioned about the use of pharmacy technicians by the Health Select Committee in its Inquiry into Pharmacy and the defensive response provided lacked any real assurances on patient safety.
PDA Chairman, Mark Koziol said, “The issues raised by the attempted homogenisation of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians by the government, GPhC, NHS, RPS, and others is part of a far wider agenda. What we are concerned about is a much more dangerous, planned, and strategic direction which impacts upon the safety of patients.
Other professions have already started to challenge the government through the courts and soon the time may come for pharmacists to do the same. Those pharmacists who continue to participate in this blurring of the lines between roles are doing nothing more than colluding in the demise of their own profession.
The PDA will watch the two existing legal challenges about the use of the phrase ‘medical professionals’ closely to consider what aspects of those cases might be used to challenge the use of the term ‘pharmacy professionals.”
Learn more
- GPhC apology highlights importance of the right terminology and use of protected titles
- PDA writes to Pharmacy Minister about the differences between pharmacists and pharmacy technicians
- Watch the Pharmacy Minister and Chief Pharmaceutical Officer give evidence to the Health Select Committee inquiry into Pharmacy in March 2024
- Health and Social Care Committee Oral evidence: Pharmacy
- PDA publishes summary of the Pharmacy Technicians Report
- BMA takes legal action over MAPs
- Anaesthetists United, General Medical Council legal challenge
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