Excellence in Care has developed a quality of care review guidance. We worked with Scottish Acute Nurse Leaders (SAND) and health board staff.
Quality of care review guidance
The guidance provides a “Once for Scotland” approach to quality of care reviews and care assurance visits. This helps to support care assurance processes at a local level.
Care assurance processes are a priority as they improve experiences and outcomes for:
- patients
- families and carers
- the workforce
To find out more view the quality of care review guidance on the Right Decision Service website and app.
How the quality of care review guidance supports local teams
The guidance helps to support local teams by providing:
- tools and resources to help understand the standards and quality of care expected or needed
- tools to support consideration of situations that impact on care delivery and where support is needed
- tools to support the identification of excellence and plan for how this can be shared
- tools to support effective and efficient use of the workforce and resources
- quality and safety indicators for each element of the Excellence in Care framework
- flexibility allowing for use in conjunction with local processes in different care contexts
- an advocated multi-professional approach
- emphasis on professional judgement to make sure the scope of any review is the same
- inclusion of the right people for the situation being reviewed and the questions asked
Evaluation report
Through the Excellence in Care programme, we developed national guidance to help health boards carry out Quality of Care (QoC) reviews. These reviews help teams understand whether people are receiving safe, effective and person‑centred care.
The guidance was published in September 2024. It was designed to support:
- shared learning
- professional judgement
- local improvement rather than inspection
We have carried out an evaluation of the programme. We wanted to understand how the guidance was being used and whether it was making a difference.
The evaluation looked:
- at how widely the guidance was used
- how easy it was to apply
- its impact on governance, leadership and improvement
We used:
- website data
- surveys
- interviews
- feedback from health boards and Scottish Government
The findings show strong uptake across Scotland. Boards are using the guidance to support assurance, learning and improvement. Boards highlighted to us the value of visible leadership, flexible use of the tools and a positive experience for staff and patients. The review also identified opportunities to improve:
- usability
- strengthen shared learning
- provide more tailored support for different care settings
Review of the quality of care review guidance
An initial review of the guidance is taking place a year after the launch. This will ensure the contents and templates meet the needs of the user.
Feedback can be submitted using the quality of care review feedback questionnaire
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