Dr Mel Ryan: key facts
- Kind of voice
- Clinician
- Role
- paediatric registrar in Nottingham and BMA lead on preventing doctor substitution
- Quoted on
- Hospital discharge / bed-blocking
- Tracked press citations
- 1
- Most recently quoted
- 27 Aug 2026
“The extent of doctor substitution shown by these figures is very concerning. It is startling to see close to half of NHS organisations reporting that they use APs in doctor staffing, holding the emergency bleeps and making referrals to different specialities. There is a vast difference in the level of education and training between doctors and APs. APs cannot substitute for doctors, yet alarmingly many employers are doing just that.”
Where Dr Mel Ryan has been quoted
- Safety fears as UK hospitals use nurses to cover for doctors due to shortage of medicstheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
Related media coverage
Recent UK press coverage of their topics — not necessarily citing them directly.
Doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and other registered clinicians quoted in a clinical capacity. Citations are counted by an automated scan of UK press coverage and may be incomplete. Roles, biographies and contact details are researched and human-reviewed before they appear here; anything not yet reviewed is simply absent rather than shown unverified. This profile was last updated on 5 Oct 2026. See the methodology for how this page is built, or email contact@bridgeheadcommunications.com to correct anything on it.