Health Services: Training
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to p.98 of the document entitled Fit for the future: 10 Year Health Plan for England, published on 3 July 2025, if he will list the training requirements identified as (a) irritating staff and (b) adding unnecessary burdens staff's working days.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The 10-Year Health Plan set out an action to review the amount of statutory and mandatory training that healthcare professionals are required to undertake. This follows a large national engagement exercise with members of the public and health and care staff. As part of this engagement, members of staff shared their poor experiences of mandatory training, citing that the training can be, repetitive or irrelevant to their role and takes them away from treating patients.
The exact amount of statutory and mandatory training completed varies, depending on which organisation they work for, their role or roles, and the frequency of their movement between organisations, for instance resident doctors rotating between organisations may have to repeat some of the training.
On average, it is estimated that nationally defined statutory and mandatory training takes up to eight hours or one day per person per year, and locally mandated training will add to this. This considerable investment of time must be balanced against the fact that this training is both important, for instance safety training and emergency preparedness training, and often required by law.
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