- FOI reveals Royal Berkshire Hospital has used PAs to fill A&E doctors’ shifts
- PAs – or physician associates – have two years of training and no medical degree
- Make-up artist died from sepsis after PA failed to record he needed antibiotics
A scandal-hit hospital has been accused of putting lives at risk by having unqualified medics covering doctors’ shifts in A&E.
Royal Berkshire Hospital is under close scrutiny over the death of a celebrated film make-up artist who died after an alleged blunder by a physician associate.
A PA is an NHS medic with no medical degree and only two years of training, who is meant only to assist doctors and nurses.
But new documents released following a Freedom of Information request reveal that, over the past year, the hospital has used PAs to fill doctors’ shifts in emergency wards more than 70 times.
The revelations come after Christopher Tucker, 81, who made prosthetics for 1980 film The Elephant Man, died from sepsis at the hospital in December 2022 after the PA treating him failed to document that Mr Tucker needed antibiotics.
He died 48 hours later.
While a Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust internal probe found the PA was not responsible for his death, Mr Tucker’s family called for a fresh investigation.
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‘These are damning findings,’ said Dr Matt Kneale, a member of the Doctors’ Association UK, which represents NHS doctors.
‘Qualified PAs are not safe replacements for doctors, so using trainee PAs, with less than 18 months’ training, is putting patients at risk.
‘The fact that this follows the death of Mr Tucker shows there are multiple red flags over how this trust uses PAs.’
The Mail on Sunday first raised the alarm about PAs last year and has since been running a campaign to Rein In The Physician Associates.
The NHS plans to recruit some 10,000 PAs by 2038 to relieve the strain on the NHS.
In March, NHS England told all trusts not to use PAs as replacements for doctors.
But since then Royal Berkshire Hospitals has used them to cover for emergency doctors 19 times.
A spokesman for the trust said it had a ‘clear code of practice and rigorous governance around their (PAs’) work’.
