Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the costs of training a cancer clinical nurse specialist.

Cancer Nurse Specialist (CNS) is a post registration nursing specialism. There are a number of different routes to becoming a CNS. Typically, a CNS would have qualified as an adult nurse before undertaking post registration training, which often comprises a number of BSc and/or MSc modules or programmes.

A Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Education funded study by the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent shows the total investment training cost for an undergraduate nurse as £66,544. No specific estimate of post registration CNS training has been made. Training would normally be funded by employers and the cost varies according to the nature of training provided.