Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment the Government has made of the quality of (a) undergraduate level and (b) specialist general practice dermatology training.

Each individual medical school sets its own undergraduate medical curriculum. These have to meet the standards set by the General Medical Council (GMC) in ‘Promoting excellence’, who then monitor and check to make sure that these standards are maintained. The curricula for postgraduate specialty training is set by individual royal colleges and faculties, and the GMC approves curricula and assessment systems for each training programme.

There are no specific medical dermatology undergraduate training pathways, as all medical students complete a medical degree and foundation training to the point of GMC registration, and then students can specialise in dermatology as part of a postgraduate core medical training and higher specialty training programme. Dermatology is one of 30 specialties within the medicine specialty group. It is a highly competitive specialty and often oversubscribed.

The number of medical specialty training places in England that are available each year is set by Health Education England and is based on their assessment of service gaps and predicted workforce needs. There has been a 100% fill rate in dermatology training in England for the past six years.

Dermatologist education and training and recruitment in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland is a matter for the devolved administrations.