BMA loses case over GMC’s use of “medical professional” to describe associates

The General Medical Council (GMC) did not act unlawfully in referring to physician associates and anaesthesia associates as “medical professionals” and in applying a common set of professional standards both to doctors and to associates, a High Court judge has ruled.1

Mrs Justice Lambert rejected a challenge by the BMA that argued that those decisions blurred the distinction between doctors and associates and posed a significant risk to public safety, particularly when combined with the lack of any nationally agreed scope of practice for associates.2

Associates are graduates with two years of clinically based training who work under a doctor’s supervision as part of a multidisciplinary team. The BMA cited instances where patients treated by an associate had been harmed and where some had been unaware that the professional they were seeing was not a doctor.

The judge pointed out that the issue she had been asked to decide was a narrow one. She said, “The challenge here is not to the …