NHS Scotland: Standards of Business Conduct

1. Introduction

The public must have confidence in the decisions made in healthcare by NHS Scotland staff. Those decisions could relate to an individual patient’s treatment and care, or others made in the conduct of business. All NHS Scotland staff should be transparent about any interests that may impact on the judgements or decisions they make.

Information on staff interests should be accessible and meaningful to anyone else who is affected by these decisions. This information needs to be systematically identified, declared, properly managed, and made available to the public.

Health bodies and NHS Scotland staff can ensure the decision-making processes are transparent and free from inappropriate influence. This guidance has been prepared to support this outcome.

The process of identifying and declaring interests is just one part of protecting the integrity of decision making. Health bodies should assure themselves that their decision-making processes are actively informed by any declared interests and take appropriate action considering those declarations.

1.1 Once for Scotland

The Standards of Business Conduct guidance has some crossover with Once for Scotland Workforce policies. This guidance is not intended to replace these, but rather to support Boards with their decision-making.

Further discussion of the Standards of Business Conduct’s relationship to existing policies can be viewed in Annex B and C.