How 'unconscious incompetence' could increasingly put you at risk under the NHS's plan for a new breed of medics: PROFESSOR ROB GALLOWAY By Dr Rob Galloway For The Daily Mail Published: 12:09 EDT, 19 August 2024 | Updated: 12:14 EDT, 19 August 2024 e-mail View comments Avoid going to hospital in August. Chances are you’ve heard this ‘warning’ before, because this is the month when junior doctors start their NHS career, and it’s led to a fear that it is a dangerous time to be in hospital. And this was not without basis.
For instance, a 2009 study by Imperial College London showed that the death rate for patients admitted as an emergency on the first Wednesday in August (when the new doctors started, and dubbed ‘Black Wednesday’ in the media) was 6 per cent higher than those admitted on the last Wednesday in July. In fact, these days it is genuinely much safer. The greater risk, in my view, is another group of medical professionals: physician associates.
Despite NHS plans for them to deliver more care, a survey published in yesterday’s Mail found that more than half of patients do not know what a ‘physician associate’ is. Dr Rob Galloway says some newly qualified doctors are overconfident But first back to the new doctors. By the time they reach the hospital floor they’ve already had years of training and passed multiple difficult exams.
And when they start, they have close supervision by more senior doctors and, crucially, they have a ‘provisional’ lice.