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The first cohort of Physician Associates in Primary Care have completed the programme having spent 12 months in primary care consolidating their skills and knowledge.
Heledd Hughes and Craig Hodges have graduated and have secured posts in Criccieth/Porthmadog Managed Practice and Bangor University respectively.
2 newly/recently qualified practitioners were successful in the February interviews and have started their placements; Sam Font who is based at Porthmadog Health Centre & Scott Ballard based at Lakeside Medical Centre, Rhyl.
12 Month Longitudinal Integrated Internship
“The team at Bradley’s have been really supportive and encouraging, helping me to maximise learning opportunities even with little face to face patient contact [due to Covid-19]. Getting started and the online induction process worked well and the monthly Skype calls with Gemma and Dr Williams have been a great way to share experiences, support one another and benefit from more formal teaching tailored to our needs. So far the internship has really confirmed my desire to work in primary care and I’m looking forward to the months ahead.”
Beth McClure Physician Associate
The development of Physicians Associates (PAs) in the UK has progressed rapidly over the past few years and are recognised as having an important role in the provision of patient care both now and in the future, and being a part of the multi-professional workforce required for the modern NHS both in hospital-based specialities and within Primary Care. Judging from the success of PA posts in Primary Care elsewhere in the UK it is very likely that PAs will become a very effective part of GP Practice/Cluster workforce across North Wales in the future.
Training & Education
This Internship Programme has been designed to offer newly qualified Physician Associates an opportunity to develop their clinical and patient facing skills in a clinically safe environment.
A named Clinical Supervisor and Educational Supervisor Dr Ffion Williams, works in partnership to deliver and shape-learning opportunities to test and consolidate both the postgraduate academic theory and the clinical practical practice based learning enhanced with weekly and monthly tutorials.
The Educational Framework includes;
- Separation of educational supervision from day-to-day clinical supervision
- Formative assessment of the development of capabilities during the Internship Programme
- Weekly face-to-face tutorials
- Monthly peer group tutorials
- Use of the Physician Associate Core Clinical Competency Framework & Matrix and RCGP clinical curriculum to plan, deliver and review the professional development of the PA
- Formal evaluation of the educational framework
Audit & Research
As part of the Internship the PAs are expected to summit an abstract to a National conference.
The first cohort of Physician Associates in Primary Care designed and completed an audit looking at patient presentations in Primary Care and how these align to the PA Core Competencies Matrix, and the findings were presented via the following poster at this years’ RCGP Conference held on 11-12 February 2021. Congratulations to Heledd, Craig, Beth and Jo, who were awarded the ‘Best Poster in the Service Delivery’ category with their poster titled ‘Increasing the capacity in Primary Care with Physician Associates
Meet the PAs
Acknowledgements
The Academy would like to thank NEWMEDED for developing the original educational framework for the Pacesetter Project WAST Advanced Practice Paramedics: Developing the Rotational Model in Primary Care that this Educational Framework has been based upon.