National Voices

The NMC meets the Service User Panel

On 30 October 2009 National Voices and the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) jointly hosted a roundtable event in Birmingham with representatives of National Voices' Service User Panel and a selection of Local Involvement Network (LINk) representatives. The aims of the day were to provide an introduction to the NMC's work and find out how the NMC can better involve service users and the wider public in its work; including setting and promoting standards, identifying issues around raising concerns about the practice of a nurse or midwife, and finally highlighting areas that the NMC should address in the future.

The report from the session, detailing the NMC's presentations on its work as a regulator, as well as answers and actions coming from the attendees' questions on the day, can be accessed here.

Establishing a new MRSA Objective

National Voices recently held a roundtable discussion event on 'Establishing a new MRSA Objective', as part of the National Quality Board's stakeholder engagement process to give patients and their representatives an opportunity to voice their thoughts and opinions on how best to drive down bloodstream infections of this particular healthcare associated infection.

Sixteen participants attended the event, including members of National Voices' Service User Panel and some LINks members.

Please click here to access a copy of the event report.

Quality Standards and Quality Accounts

Quality Standards and Quality Accounts are due to be launched in the spring of 2010. In order to gauge the patient and service user perspective, National Voices hosted a workshop entitled 'Making quality the organising principle of the NHS'.

The session looked at themes including: making Quality Standards a product that patients and service users will want to use; ensuring that patients, service users and the public understand Quality Accounts and make use of them; determining the content of the Quality Account and the manner it be published; and finally, whether Quality Accounts should be validated, and if so by whom?

To access a copy of the report please click here.

On 5 May 2009 National Voices hosted its first event for the newly-established Service User Panel. Sixteen individuals from the panel attended the workshop, entitled ‘Involvement – what does it mean to me?’, held at NCVO. The participants shared their experience of involvement in health and social care, the barriers that can prevent meaningful service user involvement, as well as considerations of how National Voices can achieve meaningful involvement in its work. The event was enjoyed by all and the informative intelligence collected from group discussions has been compiled into a report, which you can view by clicking here.