Physician Associate

Physician associates support doctors in the diagnosis and management of patients.

Working life

You’ll be a graduate who has undertaken postgraduate training and you’ll work under the supervision of a doctor. You’ll be trained to perform a number of day-to-day tasks including:

• taking medical histories from patients
• performing physical examinations
• diagnosing illnesses
• seeing patients with long-term chronic conditions
• performing diagnostic and therapeutic procedures
• analysing test results
• developing management plans
• provide health promotion and disease prevention advice for patients.

Entry requirements

You’ll usually need a bioscience-related first degree to get onto one of the training programmes available.

An undergraduate integrated Master of Physician Associate Studies at the University of Central Lancashire is also available. This course requires A-levels for entry.

Alternatively, if you’re a registered healthcare professional such as a nurse, allied health professional or midwife you can also apply to become a physician associate.