The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7476 p489
3 November 2007

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Empower NHS staff to promote clinically effective practice, says DoH report

NHS staff need to be empowered to promote clinically effective practice, say the authors of a new report, who were commissioned by England's chief medical officer to consider how clinical effectiveness in the NHS can be improved.

They conclude that activities geared towards supporting clinical effectiveness, such as those undertaken by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and the Healthcare Commission, should be aligned.

They also call for incentives for individuals, teams and institutions to engage in clinically effective practice and for the NHS to make better use of higher education to assist with the clinical effectiveness agenda. As part of this, the authors recommend the development of community-wide academic health centres to encourage relevant research.

The chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has accepted the recommendations and plans to take them forward through the new Health Innovation Council announced by Lord Darzi in his interim report on the NHS in England entitled “Our NHS, our future” (PJ, 13 October 2007, p393).

The Department of Health is also calling for proposals to pilot, what it calls, “academic health centres for the future”.