Abstract
Objective: To understand arrangements for healthcare organisations' declarations of staff interest in Scotland and England in the context of current recommendations.
Design: Cross-sectional study of a random selection of National Health Service (NHS) hospital registers of interest by two independent observers in England, all NHS Boards in Scotland and a random selection of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England.
Setting: NHS Trusts in England (NHSE), NHS Boards in Scotland, CCGs in England, and private healthcare organisations.
Participants: Registers of declarations of interest published in a random sample of 67 of 217 NHS Trusts, a random sample of 15 CCGs of in England, registers held by all 14 NHS Scotland Boards and a purposeful selection of private hospitals/clinics in the UK.
Main outcome measures: Adherence to NHSE guidelines on declarations of interests, and comparison in Scotland.
Results: 76% of registers published by Trusts did not routinely include all declaration of interest categories recommended by NHS England. In NHS Scotland only 14% of Boards published staff registers of interest. Of these employee registers (most obtained under Freedom of Information), 27% contained substantial retractions. In England, 96% of CCGs published a Gifts and Hospitality register, with 67% of CCG staff declaration templates and 53% of governor registers containing full standard NHS England declaration categories. Single organisations often held multiple registers lacking enough information to interpret them. Only 35% of NHS Trust registers were organised to enable searching. None of the private sector organisations studied published a comparable declarations of interest register.
Conclusion: Despite efforts, the current system of declarations frequently lacks ability to meaningfully obtain complete healthcare professionals' declaration of interests.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 065365 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | BMJ Open |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 4 Nov 2022 |
Keywords
- Humans
- Cross-Sectional Studies
- State Medicine
- England
- Health Personnel
- Delivery of Health Care
- Scotland
- health policy
- medical ethics
- quality in health care
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine