Physician Associates and Anaesthesia Associates in the NHS
The NHS is now 76 years from its post war inception and building a workforce capable of delivering the volume and breadth of health and social care to meet population needs continues to be a priority focus for national bodies. This national workforce challenge and its effects on the various professional groups and patient care is well documented.
The purpose of this report is twofold:
- to describe how the roles of PAs and AAs have developed to date in both the NHS and other healthcare systems
- to review the published evidence relating to patient safety, patient outcomes, patient experience and cost effectiveness of PAs and AAs.
Patient Access to Healthcare Records
Sharing and accessing patient health data is changing affording the NHS two unique opportunities. Firstly, to fully integrate individual patient care across the many boundaries that hitherto have served as barriers to data sharing within the healthcare system. Secondly, to empower and enable patients to be truly central to their own healthcare management. This report is intended to increase awareness and understanding of patient access to healthcare records from a digital perspective, the barriers and facilitators to improved access, what is achievable now and what may be achievable in the future, and critically what patients want from access to their healthcare records.
