2 Year Physician Associate Programme at RCSI backed by HSE

Ireland’s first Physician Associate (PA) Programme has been publicly backed by the HSE. This is amid a recruitment and retrenchment crisis that has manifested in the revelation that the Executive has employed 128 doctors who do not have full specialist training to work in consultant posts.

The physician associate (PA) role has grown rapidly internationally, with PAs fast becoming one of the most sought after healthcare professionals. A PA works as a member of a medical team under the supervision of a doctor or surgeon in a wide variety of workplaces (including all types of hospital and surgical care, GP practices and community health services).

They can take medical histories, examine a patient, make a differential diagnosis and draw up a management plan — all under the supervision of a fully trained doctor.

The HSE’s National Director of HR Rosarii Mannion recently met with first-year PA students at the RCSI.
During her visit to the College Rosarii Mannion took the opportunity to share the HSE People Strategy 2015-2018, outlining the role physician associates could play in meeting the key challenges faced by the health service in delivering better safer care to patients nationwide.

In 2015 Beaumont Hospital became the first Irish hospital to employ PAs, hiring four from the US. The RCSI became the first third-level institution the following year to launch a new postgraduate training programme for PAs, offering the MSc in Physician Associate Studies.

The HSE HR noted that the PA profession had grown rapidly internationally since it was first introduced 50 years ago in the US. The RCSI this year doubled its intake of students to its unique two-year PA training programme to 14.