Quality failures in the NHS

NHS Values, Compassion and Quality Indicators for Relationship Based Person-Centred Healthcare; Comment on “Morality and Markets in the NHS”

The paper by Gilbert et al. should be on the table of every politician and National Health Service (NHS) manager in the run up to the general election, when the NHS is at the hustings. They have raised profound moral dilemmas of the internal and external market in their present form, such as the practicalities of distributive justice and the enhancement of autonomy – to which are added the pres...

Achievements with quality improvement in the NHS.

This paper examines achievements in quality improvement in health care. It is not intended to be a comprehensive overview, rather to provide a brief description of how concepts of quality improvement have been used in nursing, to give examples of quality improvement in practice, and to highlight factors which need to be considered before achievements can occur. On a bad day my definition of qua...

NICE quality standards: improving healthcare quality in the English NHS?

The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is best known in primary care for its production since 2001 of evidence-based clinical guidelines covering a wide range of clinical conditions. 1 More recently, NICE guidelines have become further integrated into UK primary care through their development into performance measures for the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) payme...

Morality and Markets in the NHS

Since its establishment in 1948, the history of the National Health Service (NHS) has been characterized by organisational turbulence and system reform. At the same time, progress in science, medicine and technology throughout the western world have revolutionized the delivery of healthcare. The NHS has become a much loved, if much critiqued, national treasure. It is against this backdrop that ...

Quality Management: Lessons from the NHS