A BRADFORD health body has said those pictured in incorrect posters "did not intentionally misrepresent their roles" and agreed to be pictured "in good faith". 

The Bradford District & Craven Health & Care Partnership was thrust into the spotlight after major concerns about its posters were raised on the social media site X by Dr Rachel Clarke.

She shared images of posters created by the partnership for the ‘It’s a GP practice thing’ campaign.

The posters state that “not everyone needs to see a doctor” and “your GP practice will make sure you speak to the right person as quickly as possible”.

One poster shared by Dr Clarke stated, ‘The Physician will see you now’ while another said ‘The Cancer Specialist will see you now’.

Dr Clarke said: “Physician” is a title that’s protected in law - to protect you, the public, from the dangers of fake doctors masquerading as the real thing.

“Legally, only a qualified doctor with a medical degree can call themselves a physician.

“And, though it’s not a legally protected term, I don’t believe anyone who’s not a senior doctor with specialist training in oncology should call themselves a “cancer specialist” either.

“Yet here we have an NHS body openly (& dishonestly, & illegally) presenting PAs to the public as “physicians” - doctors - when they are no such thing.

“Just as bad, they’ve suggested general practices have “cancer specialists” yet these staff are not oncologists or even doctors at all."

The Bradford District & Craven Health & Care Partnership said "serious but genuine errors in our campaign have placed valued colleagues under significant pressure from negative comments on social media". 

A spokesperson said: "We would like to make it explicit that these colleagues did not intentionally misrepresent their roles; they consented to be photographed for the campaign in good faith and the errors were ours.

"We would like to issue a sincere apology for those colleagues whose roles have been mistakenly misrepresented.  We are undertaking a rapid internal review to understand how this mistake has happened and ensure it does not happen again in the future."

The partnership added: "We now recognise that despite receiving feedback from one of our clinical leads, we had not updated all our campaign resources.

"Therefore, the title of physician associate has been incorrectly labelled as physician and although a corrected version of the leaflet was produced, it had not been changed on posters or animations. In addition, there are two other titles with the word 'specialist' being used which has been highlighted as incorrect, and a healthcare assistant mistakenly described as ‘nurse’. These are significant errors and should have been avoided."

The partnership will now be "reviewing and correcting all campaign materials to ensure they are accurate and use the correct titles for colleagues working in general practice teams".