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Regulation of PAs

Consultation: Proposed approach to regulating physician associates

Te Kaunihera Rata o Aotearoa | Medical Council of New Zealand (the Council) is responsible for regulating physician associates/physician assistants (PAs).

We have worked with stakeholders to develop a proposed regulatory framework, and we would like your feedback.

There are five sections:
  1. What PAs can do – Scopes of practice
  2. Qualifications PAs need for registration – Prescribed qualifications, registration pathways, and changing scope of practice
  3. How PAs will be supervised – The supervision framework
  4. Cultural safety – Ensuring PAs practise in a culturally safe way
  5. Deciding the right name for PAs – The title for PA scopes of practice in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The titles ‘physician associate’ and ‘physician assistant’ are both used internationally to describe the same profession. To avoid confusion, we will use the abbreviation of ‘PA’ throughout this survey, except in the section about deciding the right title. The title that is ultimately decided on will be applied to the regulatory framework, after consultation and Council’s consideration of the feedback.

In the meantime, the Council is also working on:
  • recertification (ongoing professional development) requirements for PAs
  • developing accreditation standards for training programmes that deliver PA education
  • standards of clinical competence, cultural competence and ethical conduct for PAs
  • establishing fees for applications for registration and for practising certificates for PAs.
Consultation on these matters will take place at a later date.
About you
The first few questions below are about you and will help us analyse the feedback we get.
1.Please provide your name (optional).
2.If you are comfortable with us contacting you about your response if we need to, please provide your email address (optional).
3.What is your role or who do you represent?(Required.)
4.Are you responding on behalf of an organisation?(Required.)
5.Please tell us where you are located.(Required.)
6.We may publish a summary of responses so people can see what feedback we received. We won't publish individual names but we may publish the names of organisations. Do you consent to your responses being made publicly available?(Required.)