Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that all GPs are trained in awareness of learning disabilities.

Ben Gummer

It is the responsibility of the General Medical Council (GMC) to set the standards and outcomes for education and training and approve training curricula to ensure newly qualified general practitioners are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to provide high quality patient care. This includes training in awareness of learning disabilities.

Higher Education Institutions are responsible for ensuring the programmes they provide allow healthcare students to meet the outcomes set out by the GMC upon graduation.

The royal colleges, for example the Royal College of General Practitioners, also have responsibility for developing curricula for general practitioners, in particular postgraduate curricula.

Health Education England (HEE) works with bodies that set curricula such as the GMC and the royal colleges to seek to ensure training meets the needs of patients.

HEE is undertaking a review of curricula of all National Health Service commissioned training programmes to include recognised areas of health including learning disability, mental illness, physical illness and physical ill health and social support needs. HEE will work with regulatory bodies including the GMC to agree the standards and content for education and training; this is anticipated to be completed by April 2017.