Description

Set up

In terms of work-description a panel of country contacts, set up at the beginning of the project, was modified and expanded during the course of the project. Project partners, particularly HOPE and CPME, were very helpful in making links with individuals who were sources of information. Additional information was obtained for half the respondent countries as a means of validating the original data and for a further quarter, countries adopted a consensus approach to provide internal validation. Good practice examples were obtained by asking a network of experts (between one and six for each respondent country) to nominate examples. The network was obtained by expanding the original panel of country experts by inclusion of experts identified through responses to Q.5 of the questionnaire, so that a total of 100 or so experts were approached, resulting in the collection of 61 examples during a period of one month.

Remarks

This report summarises a mapping exercise made predominantly through the use of questionnaires, although there are some additional documents which can be found on the accompanying database in which all the questionnaire data is entered. Mapping is complemented by the Good Practice Compendium. It is not a piece of scientific research but is meant as a tool which can serve as the foundation for further, more sophisticated enquiry.

We have data from 23 of 25 EU countries (regarding United Kingdom, see note p.5) and approximately 80% of these responses are already independently validated. The missing countries are Latvia and Malta. To clarify what is meant by validation; Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia and the Slovak republic have so far provided uncorroborated data, albeit some from Health Ministries. Of the remaining 18 countries, data has been obtained from two or more sources in 12 cases, but in the other six (Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands and Sweden) some effort had been made to validate the original data using a consensus approach rather than simply providing an alternative set of responses (hence, in the database, only results from a ‘Master’ questionnaire will be entered for these six).

A note on the United Kingdom contribution

England and Wales comprises a population of approximately 54 million of the total UK population (approx. 60.6 M). The term NHS, commonly used as a synonym for ‘National Health Service’ in reality relates primarily to England and Wales (NHS Wales partly devolved). Northern Ireland & Scotland have their own systems (NHS: disambiguation).
Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for the NHS is indeed the UK government’s principal medical advisor and represents the UK in European meetings, but is professional head of all medical staff in England only and there are separate CMO’s for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The National Patient Safety Agency (of the NHS) only deals with England and Wales. For this study, to try to minimize confusion, data was only collected from England and Wales, as Scotland and Northern Ireland have different patient safety arrangements (and in Scotland, a separate legal system), but are not separate European entities.