Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including incontinence in medical training for all healthcare professionals.

No assessment has been made. The standard of training for healthcare professionals is the responsibility of the independent statutory regulatory bodies who set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses. Higher education institutions 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 emphasise the skills and approaches a healthcare professional must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and treatment plans for their patients, including for incontinence.

Employers in the health system are responsible for ensuring that their staff are trained to the required standards to deliver safe and effective treatment for patients.