Safe midwife staffing for maternity settings: draft guideline consultation

Safe Midwifery Staffing for Maternity Settings - Guideline consultation

NICE is developing a guideline on safe staffing for maternity settings.

All registered stakeholders for above guideline are invited to comment on the provisional recommendations via the website during a 4 week consultation.

NICE encourages comments from stakeholders to assist us with guidelines. If you wish to make comments we recommend that if you are not already a registered stakeholder organisation you can register on the website, or if you are an individual you can contact a registered stakeholder organisation that most closely represents your interests and pass your comments to them.

Please note - the provisional recommendations presented here do not constitute NICE's formal guideline on this topic. The recommendations are provisional and may change after consultation.

This consultation takes place between Friday 17 October - Thursday 13 November 2014 (5pm)

Consultation documents

Points to consider in the consultation

Points or areas that are not covered, but which appear to fall within the scope of the guideline
Potential inconsistencies or any disagreement with the Safe staffing Advisory Committee's interpretation of the evidence
The practical value of the provisional recommendations
Issues of style, format and readability
Whether the guideline could be changed to better promote equality of opportunity relating to age, disability, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion and belief, sexual orientation or socio-economic status. In answering this question, please include details of:
Which particular parts of the guideline you think affect equality of opportunity?
Why and how you think equality of opportunity is affected?

How to submit your comments

Responses to the draft guideline documents must be submitted using the comments proforma (Word version only, PDFs not accepted) ensuring all relevant fields are completed.

Completed comment proformas must be returned to SafeStaffingGuidelineConsultation@nice.org.uk by 5pm on 13 November 2014 at the very latest in order to be considered.

NICE is unable to accept:

Comments received after the consultation deadline (5pm on 13 November 2014)
Comments that are not on the correct proforma
More than one response proforma per stakeholder organisation
Confidential information or other material that you would not wish to be made public
Personal medical information about yourself or another person from which your or the person's identity could be ascertained
Comments forms with attachments such as research articles, letters or leaflets will not be accepted.

What will happen to your comments:

All eligible comments (with the exception of personal, individual comments and late comments) will be collated at the end of the consultation and then reviewed by the NICE team and Safe Staffing Advisory Committee
Comments from registered stakeholders and nominated expert reviewers ONLY will be formally responded to and posted on the NICE website when the final; guideline is published
No action will be taken upon receipt of personal, individual comments, comments from non-registered organisations and late comments

Please note: NICE reserves the right to summarise and edit comments received during consultations, or not to publish them at all, where in the reasonable opinion of NICE, the comments are voluminous, publication would be unlawful or publication would be otherwise inappropriate.

Comments received in the course of consultations carried out by NICE are published in the interests of openness and transparency, and to promote understanding of how recommendations are developed. The comments are published as a record of the submissions that NICE has received, and are not endorsed by NICE, its officers or advisory committees.

Supporting evidence

The following evidence was used by the Safe Staffing Advisory Committee in developing the provisional recommendations and available for information:

Evidence Review 1: Warttig S, Little K (2014) Decision support approaches and toolkits for identifying midwifery staff requirements draft evidence review. NICE
Evidence Review 2: Bazian Ltd (2014) The relationship between midwifery staffing at a local level and maternal and neonatal outcomes, and factors affecting these requirements.
Evidence Review 2: Bazian Ltd (2014) Appendix D:Evidence Tables for Evidence review 1.
Evidence Review 3: Hayre J (2014) Evidence Review 3 - Economic Evidence Review. NICE
Economics Plan
Equalities Impact Assesment form
Linking evidence to recommendations table
Scope: Safe midwifery staffing for maternity settings