Amendment 19, on the importance of practical-based training in the education of clinicians, follows on from what the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have just said. Because we are moving so quickly in health care delivery and the integration and multi-professional working, perhaps we should be looking at how holistic care, which is what I think is being referred to—the ability to see the patient pathway from primary care through to hospital care and back out to primary care—can be a pathway that nurses in particular are trained to be able to execute and to ensure that the transition from one to the other is smooth and without hiccups.
The complaint that we are getting at the moment from the public is that there is a complete block in some areas where the staff are just not aware of what the discharge policies should be and what is at the other end. That picks up the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the practical skills and the need to look at the curricula from the academic area and put them back into the practice area.
Amendment 14 concerns HEE’s staffing and skills mix in carrying out its functions. When we look at the skills mix, what we are really looking for is an evidence base. We want to look not at static numbers but at evidence based on the safety level. If the minimum is based on the safety level, we are looking at something that can be a useful guide on which to base our working.