Counselling and psychotherapy: a regulatory model under review
Counsellors and psychotherapists remain self-regulated with unprotected titles. National standards were published in 2025 and a consultancy is recommending a model.
Patient safety incidents
Everything tagged with this theme. The country and profession filters at the top still apply.
Reforms
Physician associates: expansion, regulation, and the Leng review
Planned to grow to 10,000, physician associates came under GMC regulation in 2024. After coroners' findings and an independent review, the roles are to be renamed and restricted, but not abolished.
No reforms for these filters.
Library
Physician associates and anaesthetic associates in UK: rapid systematic review of recent UK based research
Reviewed UK research on physician and anaesthetic associates published from 2015 to January 2025. Of 29 studies meeting its inclusion standard, none examined safety incidents and only one directly observed clinical competence.
Why it matters: In our view, a clear statement of the evidence gap: the authors warn that absence of evidence of safety incidents is not evidence that the roles are safe. Co-author Martin McKee was BMA president in 2022-23.
Susan Pollitt: Prevention of Future Deaths report
A senior coroner found that an ascitic drain, which a junior doctor had decided to place, was not clinically indicated. The physician associate who inserted it was unaware of local guidance, left it in for 21 hours and directed that it be clamped, which the coroner found was unwarranted. The report also raises the absence of a regulator at the time, title confusion, and a competency sign-off that covered only the technical skill of inserting the drain, not consent, risk factors or aftercare.
Why it matters: Its first concern was that there was then no regulator at all, so it does not show that proportionate regulation fails; its other concerns (training, supervision, the title, competency sign-off) remain relevant under regulation.
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