As part of our work to advise the Secretary of State for Health on Standards for members of NHS boards and Clinical Commissioning Group governing bodies in England, we carried out research with members of the public and NHS staff in England. We sought their views on the content, accessibility, and applicability of the draft Standards.
May 2012
As part of our work to advise the Secretary of State for Health on Standards for members of NHS boards and Clinical Commissioning Group governing bodies in England, we carried out research with members of the public and NHS staff in England. We sought their views on the content, accessibility, and applicability of the draft Standards. The findings informed the version of the Standards that we submitted to the Secretary of State alongside our advice. We have since reviewed the Standards against the relevant recommendations in the reports and reviews published in 2013 by Robert Francis QC, Sir Bruce Keogh, Don Berwick, Dame Fiona Caldicott, and Camilla Cavendish. This resulted in some minor amendments.
Purpose
We carried out this research to help us understand how useful our Standards could be to members of the public and NHS Staff, and to ensure that they were relevant and accessible. We took the findings into account in drafting our advice to the Secretary of State for Health on the Standards for members of NHS boards and Clinical Commissioning Group governing bodies in England.
We recruited Research Works to find participants and design and carry out the research.
Background
We were asked to advise the Secretary of State on Standards for NHS board members and members of CCG governing bodies in July 2011, following the Government’s commitment in Enabling Excellence to ‘commission independently led work to agree consistent standards of competence and behaviour for senior NHS leaders.’
For this commission, we carried out a review of relevant policy developments, spoke to a wide range of stakeholders to develop a first draft of the Standards, and held a three-month public consultation on this first draft. As part of the consultation we were keen to hear the views both of patients and the public and of those NHS staff members who would not be subject to the Standards but might be affected by them.
Research brief
The purpose of the research was to determine:
- the appropriateness and relevance of the form and content of the draft Standards
- the impact the Standards could have on any individuals or groups based on age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy, and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
- whether any changes to the wording or format of the Standards might be required to make them more relevant to either NHS Staff or patients and the public.
As the commission related to England, the sample, which included both members of the public and NHS staff, covered England only.
Findings
This research targeted a number of different audiences, all of whom had different interests in the Standards. This resulted in a few contradictory suggestions about amendments to the Standards, coinciding with each group’s interests. There was nevertheless a great deal of congruence in the views that were expressed on the Standards:
- Firstly, all saw a need for Standards in the new NHS context and expressed concerns about governance issues, although awareness of NHS reforms was generally low amongst the participants.
- All thought accountability was central to the purpose of Standards, and, crucially, felt this was adequately addressed in the draft for consultation.
- It was suggested that the Standards might ask a lot of one person but would cover what was needed of board as a whole
- The Standards needed to be more patient-focused with greater emphasis on caring and empathy.
For the more detailed findings, please see our advice to the Secretary of State for Health.
Next steps
We took into account the research findings, alongside the feedback from the consultation and peer review group, to develop our final advice to the Secretary of State for Health. This document describes in detail how we achieved this.