Consultant's Catch-up
September has been another busy month for the field team. We have now almost finished our introductory visits to county councils and local authorities and we have started to evaluate them. Thank you to all those local authorities who replied to our survey. We are beginning to work increasingly closely with organisations beyond the NHS and the feedback we have obtained from these visits is helping to inform our work with local authorities for the forthcoming year. We have already published our first leaflet for people working with local communities to promote health and wellbeing - there will be more on this in the next issue of Into Practice.
Back to the NHS, and the field team have started introducing themselves to cancer and cardiac networks and specialised commissioning groups. Our aim is to look at how NICE guidance can support the work of these specialist groups in implementing guidance across organisations and health economies. As ever, we have also been keen to gather feedback on our guidance and tools and pick up suggestions for new topics.
Once we have completed these visits we will have made at least one visit to every organisation within the NHS - we are pleased to say that many have invited us back on several occasions. The next stage of our work will involve a more "themed" approach, addressing particular issues identified on previous visits. Commissioning will be our first initiative in this area. As part of this we will be exploring how our guidance can better support commissioning locally. We will also be raising awareness of the new commissioning guides which NICE will be publishing next year.
Many of you will be aware of our shared learning database which we launched at the end of last year after people told us that they wanted local examples of NICE guidance being put into practice. We have been pleasantly amazed at the number of downloads and, in recognition of the quality of the entries, we have established a Shared Learning Award. Although the closing date for this year's award has passed, we are now accepting entries for next year's. Interest is growing (and standards rising) so, if you have an example of a project relating to NICE guidance which you think others might learn from, send us your entries via the website (www.nice.org.uk/sharedlearning )
Lastly, our activities have now attracted interest internationally! At the end of August my colleague, Steve Sparks was invited to speak on the work of the Field Team at the Guidelines International Network in Toronto. Whilst the recognition was gratifying it hasn't turned our heads! The day to day work of visiting, answering queries, helping solve problems and generally providing as much support to local organisations as we can goes on. If you have any questions or would like to meet with your Implementation Consultant, please get in touch. Chris.connell@nice.org.uk
