The draft NICE good practice guidance for patient group directions (PGDs) is now available for consultation. The consultation period will end at 5pm on Monday 29 April 2013.

Registered stakeholders for this guidance are invited to comment on the draft guidance via this website. Organisations not registered as stakeholders and individuals are not able to comment. We recommend that your organisation registers as a stakeholder or you contact the registered stakeholder organisation that most closely represents your interests and pass your comments to them, asking them to consider your comments in their response.

Note that the provisional recommendations presented here do not constitute the Institute's formal guidance on this topic. The recommendations are provisional and may change after consultation.

Consultation dates: 1 April - 29 April 2013

Also please note: links to the Department of Health (DH) website may be broken as the website location is moving. All website links in the guidance will be checked prior to final publication.

Consultation documents

• Patient group directions: draft good practice guidance
• Comments proforma
• Registered stakeholders list

Points to consider in the consultation

In addition to any general comments you may wish to submit about the provisional guidance we would value comments on:

• the practical value of the guidance and provisional recommendations
• a general view (either positive or negative) of the quality and content of the draft guidance
• points or areas that appear to fall within the scope but are not covered in the draft guidance
• any gaps in the evidence that the recommendations are based on
• how easy the recommendations will be to implement
• potential inconsistencies in the interpretation of the evidence
• disagreements with the interpretation of the evidence
• wording (for example, could the recommendations be clearer, or the language more patient-centred; could the wording be perceived as excluding patients or groups of patients?)
• issues of style and format; for example, stakeholders may feel that the information could be made more readable and easy to follow
• whether the recommendations discriminate against some groups on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

How to submit your comments

Please provide all responses to the draft guidance using the comments proforma (ensuring all relevant fields are completed, including your organisation's full name) and forward this electronically by 5pm on Monday 29 April 2013 at the very latest to this email address: pgd@nice.org.uk

The Institute is unable to accept:

• comments from non-registered organisations - if you wish your comments to be considered please register as a stakeholder here
• comments from individuals - please contact the registered stakeholder organisation that most closely represents your interests and pass your comments to them
• comments received after the consultation deadline
• comments that are not on the correct proforma, or incorrectly completed proformas
• more than one response per stakeholder organisation
• confidential information or other material that you would not wish to be made public
• personal medical information about yourself or another person from which your or the person's identity could be ascertained

What will happen to your comments

The NICE project team and guidance development group will review all eligible comments received at the end of the consultation. Comments from registered stakeholders and nominated expert reviewers ONLY will be formally responded to and posted on the NICE website at the time of publication. No action will be taken upon receipt of personal, individual comments, comments from non-registered organisations and late comments.

Please note: NICE reserves the right to summarise and edit comments received during consultations, or not to publish them at all, where in the reasonable opinion of the Institute, the comments are voluminous, publication would be unlawful or publication would be otherwise inappropriate.

Comments received in the course of consultations carried out by the Institute are published in the interests of openness and transparency, and to promote understanding of how recommendations are developed. The comments are published as a record of the submissions that the Institute has received, and are not endorsed by the Institute, its officers or advisory committees.

Anticipated publication date: June 2013