Local Accreditation

Nursing, midwifery and care staff as part of their everyday practice are well-placed to identify opportunities for transformational change. Change that will support delivery of better outcomes and experiences of those who use our services. We have seen this during the COVID—19 pandemic – nurses and midwives leading innovative, new ways of working and embracing evidenced-based care which continues to benefit those they care for, and work with.

To support this, local accreditation provides us with the tools to undertake a comprehensive assessment of quality of care at ward, unit and team levels. It does this by bringing together key measures into a single overarching framework, from across nursing and clinical care as relevant to us and to our patients.

Local Accreditation is:

  • the development of a set of standards so that areas for improvement can be identified and areas of excellence celebrated.

Experience shows accreditation programmes can drive continuous improvement in patient outcomes, as well as increase patient satisfaction and staff experience at ward and unit level.

In April 2019, the Chief Nursing Officer for England launched the ‘Guide to developing and implementing ward and unit accreditation programme’ as a guide for Chief Nurses and those in senior nursing and midwifery roles to support them with local accreditation as well as to shared examples of good practice and learning.

 

The Chief Nursing Officer for England, Ruth May highlights:

“I see ward and unit accreditation as having huge potential to enable nursing and midwifery-led improvement and the sharing of learning and good practice. I am delighted to see momentum gathering behind this approach”.

The frameworks, tools and resources contained within these webpages aim to showcase exemplars and to help set up local ward and unit accreditation programmes, embrace the leadership potential of all staff and demonstrate positive outcomes in some brilliant local quality initiatives.