Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on introducing the flexible training for healthcare professionals seeking to switch discipline announced on 9 February 2020.
The Department continues to work with Health Education England and other partners on a range of initiatives to reform the medical and nursing training systems to ensure that the National Health Service workforce aligns with patient and service need. This includes taking action to widen access into healthcare professions and increase the flexibility of training pathways.
As part of this work, the Government is considering opportunities as a result of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union to support healthcare professionals to switch disciplines. Any changes to training for regulated healthcare professions would be developed in conjunction with stakeholders and would be subject to full public consultation where appropriate. Approved education providers would need to consider prior learning to assess the flexibility of programmes or entry requirements and any individual training courses that arose from this work would need to be approved by the relevant regulator.