Diabetes and Podiatry

(asked on 15th March 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will take steps to record the number of (a) diabetic specialist nurses and (b) podiatrists in order to ensure that adequate numbers of such staff are employed in the NHS.


Answered by
Steve Barclay Portrait
Steve Barclay
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
This question was answered on 22nd March 2018

The information held by NHS Digital is based upon the National Workforce Data Set (NWD) which records nationally consistent information about the healthcare workforce for the purposes of monitoring and workforce planning, but does not capture a sufficient level of detail to allow the investigation of very specialist services.

NHS Digital are leading on a review of NWD codes, this review will consider whether a specific code for diabetic specialist nurses is appropriate. At present NHS Digital is engaged in a sub-group of the Workforce Information Review Group which is tasked with producing proposals to overhaul the NWD with respect to the nursing workforce. Part of this work includes giving consideration to current data gaps, and this will be focusing on the ability to capture information regarding diabetic specialist nurses, provided this is considered a distinct role and something which can practically be captured as part of standard coding – this is not always possible, for example where a role which is not clearly defined or effectively cuts across many other roles rather than being a distinct role in its own right.

Podiatrists and chiropodists are recorded under a single set of occupation codes as together they represent just one of the 16 professions requiring registration with the Health and Care Professions Council.

NHS Digital has not received any requests, to date, to capture data specifically about podiatrists as opposed to the current joint data capture with chiropodists. In future there is likely to be a review of the current coding, guidance, data quality and analysis related to Allied Health Professional staff, and this question could then be asked of any such group as part of its review.

Reticulating Splines