Putting NICE guidance into practice

Dr Gillian Leng, NICE implementation director, explains how NICE is helping NHS and public health professionals put NICE guidance into practice

The NICE implementation programme was set up in 2004 to help the NHS and local authorities put NICE guidance into practice. Since then we have set up a diverse and expanding programme of work, offering interactive and easy-to-tailor tools to assess the financial impact of implementing guidance, online databases to share skills and experience and a team of dedicated implementation consultants offering advice to healthcare management teams in the NHS.

The implementation resources and services that NICE provides are free and easy to access via the NICE website. We have already published over 200 implementation tools, there are 54 examples of good practice on our shared learning database and we have recently published five commissioning guides to support the commissioning of evidence-based care for patients.

We have established six regional implementation consultants who visit over 100 NHS organisations around the country each month, offering advice on how to use implementation support tools, help to solve problems by sharing examples of best practice and offer the chance for clinicians and managers to feed back to NICE on local issues concerning implementation and suggestions for improvement.

The consultants have also started a programme of visits to local authorities. These visits raise awareness of the NICE public health programme and provide an opportunity to identify the best ways for the Institute to communicate with this new audience.

Improvements to the services we offer are key to aid people in the NHS to implement NICE guidance. We are continually evaluating the challenges to implementation to ensure that we provide the most effective support tools and advice. Building on this, we will produce a new publication in December entitled, How to get over the barriers to change. This guide aims to help clinicians and managers improve the care they provide for patients by focussing on understanding, identifying and overcoming potential barriers to changing practice. It offers practical tips as well as an insight into the evidence.

We will also be providing even better support for local audit by producing a ready-to-use audit tool in the New Year. Ongoing work throughout the Institute will ensure that our guidance can be linked electronically to other information packages, such as the Map of Medicine, so that recommendations are readily accessible through a variety of routes.

www.nice.org.uk/usingGuidance