Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help improve the knowledge of GPs on the symptoms of young onset dementia.

We want all general practitioners to have received appropriate training, in order to provide high quality care to people with dementia, regardless of the person’s age or individual needs.

The standard of training for health care professionals is the responsibility of the health care independent statutory regulatory bodies who set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses and Higher Education Institutions to write and teach the curricula content that enables their students to meet the regulators outcome standards.

Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all nevertheless emphasize the skills and approaches a Health Care Practitioner must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and treatment plans for their patients, including for dementia.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out NHS England’s commitment to improving training for workers caring for people with dementia.

The Long Term plan also sets out the plan for there to be more healthcare staff working in and with GP practices, which will mean people will be able to get an appointment with the right professional depending on their needs. This means that those with dementia will be able to access the most appropriate support more quickly.

The plan will include more GPs, nurses and 20,000 additional pharmacists, physiotherapists, paramedics, physician associates and social prescribing link. These bigger teams of staff will work with other local services to make sure people, including those with dementia, get better access to a wider range of support for their needs.

We are seeing more people from younger cohorts with multimorbidity. Multimorbidity challenges the specialised approach to medicine, which has improved our ability to successfully treat single diseases. The Long Term Plan also addresses the increased need for medical and other clinical professionals with generalist and core skills to manage and support patients with seemingly unrelated diseases.

There are also a variety of resources available on the NHS England E-learning for Health platform, including a programme on dementia care, designed to enhance the training and education of the health and social care workforce.