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Any attempt to abandon the NHS' Clinical Excellence Awards in the future would spell the death knell of clinical academic medicine in the NHS, says Lord Walton of Detchant.
There has been some ill-informed comment in the public press of late suggesting that Clinical Excellence Awards awarded to consultants in the National Health Service and to clinical academics holding honorary consultant contracts are bonuses; they certainly are not, as, since the inception of the National Health Service, they have formed a fundamental component of the consultant salary scale.
These awards, originally known as 'Distinction Awards' were, indeed, introduced by Aneurin Bevan at the inception of the NHS, in order to persuade distinguished consultants and senior clinical academics to give their services to the National Health Service.
These awards are graded (A+, A, B and C). In the beginning they were awarded almost entirely as a result of local committees established under the National Advisory Committee on Distinction Awards, but, in more recent years, employing authorities and lay members of such authorities, along with managers as well as medical professionals, have played a part in assessing applications for such awards and in deciding upon those who should receive them.
The question I have tabled for answer on June 27 invites the government to say why it has decided not to make any new awards in 2011. In my view, any attempt to abandon such awards in the future would spell the death knell of clinical academic medicine and of high standards of clinical care, teaching and research in the NHS.
Lord Waltonwas raised to the peerage in 1989. He is a former consultant neurologist
Article Comments
As a lay activist in the NHS -CHC etc - for some twenty years currently a Public Governor SECAmb FT.
I agree wholeheartedly with your stand on this issue. To remove the concept of rewarding inititative and enterprise will only encourage quality work to go elsewhere rather than stay in the NHS to the advantage of all patients, freely given, as as Bevan intended. Furthermore it will be another step to demoralising NHS staff.
Yes from time to time it will be necessary to revise the manner in whch these awards are determned (public involvement being vogue at the moment) along with the development of technology new specialist evaluation wil be required. We must not be guided by the demand of ill-informed, unresearched, opinionist media scribes making a living from promoting popularist ideas out of context.
Robin Kenworthy
27th Jun 2011 at 1:25 pm
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