Health bosses admit physician associates have ‘illegally’ prescribed drugs to NHS patients

Associate doctors have “illegally” prescribed drugs to patients in NHS hospitals, health chiefs have admitted.

Details released under Freedom of Information laws show support staff at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust prescribed medication, including opioids and sedatives, on 22 occasions.

According to the trust, personal assistants had access to the electronic prescribing system for seven months due to a computer error.

PAs are healthcare workers who only have two years of training, instead of five years of medical school. They are supposed to assist doctors in performing basic clinical tasks and have no legal right to prescribe medications.

Their role in the NHS has become increasingly controversial, with critics arguing their training is insufficient and could put patients at risk.

The revelation of illegal prescribing was made in response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by a member of the public and seen by the Telegraph.

The hospital trust has refused to say whether any personal assistants who prescribed the drugs without legal authorization lost their jobs as a result.

In almost all circumstances it is a criminal offense for anyone other than a doctor, dentist, pharmacist or veterinarian to supply controlled medicines under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

The Telegraph said it understands that the trust has not referred any of the personal assistants involved in this incident to West Yorkshire Police.

Between July 2023 and January this year, personal assistants at the trust, which runs two hospitals, prescribed controlled medications to patients, including the opioid painkillers oxycodone and codeine.

He was also prescribed the sedatives lorazepam, diazepam and midazolam, the latter of which is often used in end-of-life care.

The drugs are classified as “controlled” by the government because of their risk of harm and addiction.

Calderdale and Huddersfield said “strict monitoring has now been put in place to prevent further incidents of PA prescribing” and insisted no patients had been harmed.

On Monday, peers will debate a motion that could derail the government’s plans to give the General Medical Council the power to regulate PAs and their training.

The British Medical Association – the doctors’ union – wants the bill to be amended so that the Health and Care Professions Council oversees PAs rather than the GMC.

It states that licensing physicians and nonphysicians together “increases the risk that patients will mistakenly believe that PA care is equivalent to physician expertise.”

Solicitor Sean Caulfield of Hodge Jones & Allen said: “If a medical associate has innocently carried out acts of supplying controlled drugs, for which he was not authorized, it may not be in the public interest to prosecute him.”

‘However, if someone, associate doctor or not, intended to supply or supplied controlled drugs, knowing it would be illegal, that would be different.

“In those circumstances the Crown Prosecution Service may think it is in the public interest to prosecute.” Calderdale and Huddersfield highlighted that their personal assistants, who work in medicine, surgery and accident and emergency, “are instructed that they cannot legally prescribe”.

West Yorkshire Police said they would work with trusts “to understand whether criminal offenses have been committed” if they are made aware of any concerns, adding that all reports are “assessed based on threat, risk and harm”.