Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how they plan to ensure that medical schools have integrated antimicrobial stewardship competencies into undergraduate curriculums, to help meet the aims of the five-year antimicrobial resistance action plan; and whether the Department of Health and Social Care is primarily responsible for coordinating this with the General Medical Council and the Department for Education.

The standard of medical training is the responsibility of the General Medical Council (GMC), which is an independent statutory body. The GMC has the general function of promoting high standards of education and co-ordinating all stages of education to ensure that medical students and newly qualified doctors are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential for professional practice.

Each individual medical school sets its own undergraduate medical curriculum. This has to meet the standards set by the GMC, who then monitor and check to make sure that these standards are maintained. Whilst curricula do not necessarily highlight specific conditions for doctors to be aware of, they instead emphasise the skills and approaches that a doctor must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and treatment plans for their patients.

The NHS England Antimicrobial Resistance Programme, a prescribing workstream, has collaborated with the Workforce Training and Education directorate to co-produce, with stakeholders from university schools of pharmacy, an indicative curriculum and competency framework for antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial stewardship, as a part of the new initial education and training programme for United Kingdom pharmacists who will graduate with independent prescribing rights from 2025/26. The prescribing workstream has plans to make contact with the GMC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council during 2025/26 to establish how antimicrobial stewardship is taught and examined in undergraduate medical and nursing courses in England, and to support improvement as required.