Universities to develop closer links for joint medical and nursing student education

The Index has not yet recorded a verbatim government response to this recommendation.

Pre-registration training is not linked for medical and nursing students. However, much post registration training is now delivered using a multi-disciplinary approach.

An example is the Patient safety syllabus. In partnership with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, NHS England launched the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus in 2021. By June 2024, Level 1 of the training under this syllabus has been accessed over 2 million times, level 2 over 1 million, and level 1 for boards over 80,000. Work on training and education in patient safety needs to be ongoing to continue to support new staff and improve learning throughout the system. The work to develop the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus and Level 1 and 2 of the training under the syllabus was done in partnership with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

Many organisations, including NHS England, have made training in level 1 of the patient safety syllabus mandatory for all staff. Work continues to develop and deliver training under the syllabus.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published by NHS England (June 2023) sets out a series of interventions to train, retain and reform the workforce, and put the NHS on a sustainable footing into the future. Backed by more than £2.4 billion in government investment it outlines how the NHS will address existing vacancies and meet the challenges of a growing and aging population by recruiting and retaining hundreds of thousands more staff over the next 15 years and reforming the way the service works. NHS England has committed to review the plan at least every two years.

The Government agreed with this recommendation.

In its January 2002 response, the Department of Health said that universities were developing closer links with schools of nursing education.