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Lives are being put at risk through the downskilling of the NHS
The government’s latest cost-cutting NHS manoeuvres are a risk to patient safety – they must be vigorously opposed, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
General view of staff on a NHS hospital ward, January, 2023

THE British government is preparing to legislate for new “regulated” medical roles in the NHS that it claims will “improve patient safety”: “medical associates.” However, the government and the NHS admit that these roles are not qualified doctors and that they form a key part of the government’s “long-term plan” to increase the NHS workforce. 

The new plan for these semi-qualified roles to be regulated by the General Medical Council will drive the supposedly “safe” “expansion of medical associate roles to support doctors and GPs,” amounting to a padding out of NHS numbers to allow costs to be driven down through a “downskilling” of the NHS workforce.

The absence of proper workforce planning since the Conservatives entered government in 2010 was highlighted by the King’s Fund earlier this year as a major cause of the struggles of the NHS, yet the Tories’ response to that now is to fill positions with people who are not as qualified as those the NHS has lost.

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