Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to provide training to NHS staff on providing advice to patients on palliative care.

NHS England is committed to the delivery of high-quality personalised palliative and end of life care to people who are dying, and those important to them, by highly trained, knowledgeable and skilful staff. This training ranges from modules and programmes available at degree and master’s level via Higher Education Institutions, through to a library of online resources to support knowledge and skills development. For example, the E-End of Life Care for All programme, comprising of 156 sessions on aspects of end of life care developed to support social care and health workers working with people at the end of life

The importance of training is further recognised in the NHS Long Term Plan in its commitment to roll out training to help staff identify and support palliative and end of life patients.