Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to promote geriatric medicine to doctors as a career specialism.

Health Education England (HEE) is working to support recruitment into all specialties, including geriatric medicine. HEE works closely with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) on recruitment and retention in geriatric medicine, for example by nominating a lead postgraduate dean to support the RCP’s specialist advisory committee’s work on training in geriatric medicine.

In the longer term, the expansion of undergraduate medical school places by 1,500 which will be rolled out from September 2018 until September 2020 will also help to increase the supply of doctors to the National Health Service.