Physician Associates Internship in Primary Care

The development of Physician Associates (PAs) in the UK has progressed rapidly over recent years and the role is recognised as having a part to play in the provision of patient care both now and in the future.

Primary Care Internship Programme

The Academy offered a 12 month funded primary care Internship for newly qualified Physician Associates (PAs) qualifying from Welsh Universities.

PAs were required to have completed their MSc in Physician Associate Studies, have passed both elements of the Physician Associate National Exam and have registered on the Managed Voluntary Physician Associate Register.

What was the Primary Care Internship?

The Primary Care Internship was a 12 month placement with a GP practice who were able to support newly a qualified PA to take their first step into working as a qualified PA.

Recognising that as a newly qualified PA it can be quite daunting, this internship programme was designed to lay a foundation for personal and professional practice for years to come.

The programme had three distinct elements:

• Clinical practice: 80% of  time was in practice, spent seeing patients.
• Continued Professional Development: 10% of time was protected for continued professional development needs.
• Audit /Research/Quality Improvement: Actively encouraged PAs to undertake an audit or participate in clinical research if the practice is research active or to identify a service or quality improvement project.

Previous cohorts submitted the findings of their audits to the RCGP annual conference and have been able to attend in order to present their posters.

RCGP Annual Conference 

The first cohort of PAs designed and completed an audit looking at patient presentations in primary care and how these align to the PA Core Competencies Matrix. The findings were presented in a poster at the virtual RCGP conference held in 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'.

Cohort two at the RCGP Annual Conference in Liverpool 2021

Scott, Sam and Ellie attended and presented their poster titled 'Qualitative Analysis of Discharge Letters Received by Primary Care across General Practices in North Wales'.