Consultant's catch-up
You may remember that Val wrote in last month's Into Practice that the consultants have been focusing on visiting maternity units in the first part of this year. We are pleased to report that we continue to receive a warm welcome, and that the discussions are proving useful both to NICE and to the heads of maternity.
Whenever we visit organisations, we check that people are aware of the range of support tools that NICE has to offer. These include the forward planner - which lists all the technology appraisals, interventional procedures and clinical guidelines which have been completed, or are in progress. Some of these are not due for publication until 2010 and beyond - so this gives implementers a really good chance to do some horizon scanning. In maternity units, for example, it may help to decide on the timing of a service review - possibly postponing it until a particular piece of guidance is published. This kind of planning has the potential to save a lot of duplicated effort.
We also produce slide sets a couple of weeks after guidance is published, which summarise the key recommendations. Heads of maternity can see real potential for these for briefing their staff, but many we have met so far did not know about them. The slides are presented in PowerPoint, complete with comprehensive speakers' notes, and you can edit, add or remove slides to suit your audience.
If your job is to distribute NICE guidance through your organisation, it might be worth checking that those who are expected to lead on implementation are also aware of the tools which support the guidance. An overview of implementation support, can be found here. To find the tools for a particular piece of guidance - look on the guidance home page, below the list of types of guidance and the Understanding NICE guidance documents. You will find links to all the tools published to date.
And to make sure everyone knows when the tools are published - why not invite them to visit the home page of our website and sign up to receive Into Practice every month?
