Safe Staffing – Accident and Emergency Evidence Review

NICE, established under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, is the executive Non Departmental Public Body responsible for providing guidance and advice to support health and social care commissioners, providers and others to make sure that the care and preventative services provided are of the best possible quality and offers the best value for money. NICE has a statutory role that encompasses the development of quality standards, advice, information and recommendations about NHS, public health and social care services. NICE provides independent, evidence-based guidance on the most effective ways to prevent, diagnose and treat disease and ill health and reduce health inequalities, and operates an independent accreditation programme to validate the guidance production of external organisations. In November 2013 NICE was asked by the Department of Health (DH) and NHS England to develop new guideline outputs which focus on safe staffing. To date NICE has received nine topic referrals, please see http://www.nice.org.uk/safestaffing for further information. It is envisaged that these guidelines will support local decisions making in a range of NHS settings and will also be of relevance to non-NHS bodies that provide care for NHS patients. The guidelines may also be a useful resource to patients and carers. Each guideline is developed by the Safe staffing Advisory Committee (SSAC) and contains a series of recommendations based on a systematic review of the available evidence (including economic studies) and a separate economic analysis and modelling report. Development on the first guideline topic – Safe nurse staffing of adult in-patient wards in acute hospitals has commenced and is due to be published in July 2014. Development of the second guideline topic – maternity settings – has also commenced and is due to publish in January 2015. NICE would now like to commission a contractor/s to produce an evidence review to inform the development of the third guideline topic – Accident and emergency settings.