OVERVIEW

We are no longer taking applications for January 2023 for this course.

Applications are only open during the following dates:

Round 1: 6 June - 16 July

Round 2 (If Applicable): 3 October - 28 October

This is a two-year full-time course of at least 90 weeks, with substantive time in clinical placement. You will study the anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, microbiology, and pharmacology related to the human body in health and disease.

You will learn how to take a clinical history from a patient, request appropriate investigations, use clinical reasoning, and then formulate a safe and coherent management plan, including referral to specialities, if appropriate. You will study the principles of public health, the psychosocial aspects of health and aspects of common mental health presentations.

You will learn skills to ensure patient safety, how to communicate in multi-disciplinary teams, prevent clinical error, and learn about the process of clinical reasoning and how to reach a diagnosis and suggest the correct management of your patient.

You will also learn research methodologies, the process of evaluation, how to prepare a research proposal and undertaking a service improvement project.

YOUR FUTURE CAREER

Physician Associates are a new type of healthcare professional that have a broad, generalist medical education. In order to work as a Physician Associate you will need to pass your university course and then in addition you will need to pass a professional national exam. This consists of a theory and a practical section. You will then need to join a Managed Voluntary Register of Practitioners. You will work alongside GPs, physicians and surgeons to provide clinical care as part of an integrated multidisciplinary team either in hospital or in the community. Physician Associates are dependent practitioners, who as they gain experience and skills can learn to work autonomously, but will always work under the supervision of a fully trained and experienced doctor. They bring a range of new professional talent to add to the existing skill mix within clinical teams. Physician Associates provide a stable, generalist section of the clinical workforce which will increasingly help to ease the clinical workforce pressures that the NHS increasingly faces.