NHS Citizen Bristol workshop

Last week I attended an NHS Citizen workshop. This was my first time at an NHS Citizen event. This note describes what I think NHS Citizen is, what challenges it faces and how it might succeed.

NHS Citizen is an active communication channel whereby the NHS England board will be informed about issues of English importance which they should address in their policies and strategies. An initial reaction to this statement might be: “But there are other organisations, such as Healthwatch, Patient Voices, the Patients’ Association and others who already do this.” NHS Citizen is different. The focus in NHS Citizen is on issues of health and care policy which need to be addressed by the board of NHS England. NHS Citizen is a communication channel for all, whether individuals or members of an organisation. I would expect organisations in the health and care environment to use NHS Citizen, once launched, as a channel to promote the policy aspects of subjects and to gain support for their positions through the mechanisms of NHS Citizen.

I see the active attribute of NHS Citizen in the operation of its three stage process:

1. finding out what the national policy issues are;
2. collecting support and evidence around particular issues to confirm they are national issues which can be presented to the NHS England board;
3. deliberating on the most important issues to present a good case for NHS England to change policy, initiate a new policy or otherwise change its strategy.

NHS Citizen faces the challenge of clearly identifying what its specific role is concerning policy, how it is different to other organisations, how it works with other organisations in the pursuit of its goals.

Some of the statements that it should be possible to make about NHS Citizen:

• inclusive – anyone in England (because we are all NHS Citizens) can tell NHS Citizen their issue, concern, need for change; and take part in the following discussion
• enabling those who are not part of the digital environment to put their views forward through intermediaries
• transparent in the way it works, from defining the etiquette to be followed when using NHS Citizen to the protocols for deciding who attends meetings and how decisions are made
• adaptive to changes in the health and care environment to make sure it is still effective
• responsive to calls for change in the way it works
• a good communicator about what it does
• always provides feedback to those who contribute about how their contribution was treated.