Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to train community healthcare professionals to (a) support and (b) provide appropriate referrals to specialist care for people with moderate to severe atopic eczema.

Training programmes for healthcare professionals must meet the standards set by the regulatory body for their profession. Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all nevertheless emphasise the skills and approaches a Health Care Practitioner must develop to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and treatment plans for their patients.

The standard of training for health care professionals is the responsibility of the independent statutory health care regulatory bodies, which set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses, and higher education institutions which write and teach the curricula content that enables their students to meet the regulators’ outcome standards.

Individual employers are responsible for ensuring their staff are trained and competent to carry out their role, including ensuring staff are aware of care pathways and referral routes for those living with moderate to severe atopic eczema.