Involving people in decisions about their treatment and care so that they can make informed choices about their health and care are at the heart of person-centred care.  

Shared decision making is a collaborative process where clinicians and individuals consider treatment and care options based on evidence about their potential benefits and harms, to enable the person to decide the best course for themselves. The conversation and decision made should be informed by what matters to the person, their goals, values, hopes, ideas, concerns and expectations. The Shared decision making standard provides a framework for clinicians to record the decision-making process that they undertook with people. It allows the shared decision and supporting information to be shared between professionals and their different record systems. The standard was based on GMC guidance and NICE guidelines.  

PRSB has long been determined to produce a shared decision-making standard and we are grateful to EIDO Healthcare for their unwavering commitment and support that enabled us to get this project off the ground and see it through to completion.  

For many people, improving their health and wellbeing requires a holistic approach and support by professionals who can help them focus on what matters to them to live well. Social prescribing supports people to understand their needs and connects them to local community (non-clinical), often voluntary services which can provide the help they need. 

The Social prescribing standard enables sharing and recording of information for the whole patient journey, from initial referral, throughout the period of social prescribing and the message back to the referrer and GP at its conclusion. 

The standard is UK wide with involvement from representatives of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England.  

PRSB is working with NHS Digital to develop the technical capability to share social prescribing information between computers for professional use. We also expect the standard to be mandated by the Data Alliance Partnership Board in autumn 2022, which will ensure it is implemented by system suppliers, so its use becomes widespread in England. 

The needs of people of all ages who are at or near the end of life, their families, carers and communities, should be addressed, considering their priorities, preferences and wishes. Personalised care as individuals near the end of life will result in a better experience, tailored around what really matters to the person, as well as create more sustainable services. 

During 2021 we updated the standard for palliative and end of life care to ensure that professionals and individuals have access to appropriate information to support decision making for those with palliative care needs and those approaching the end of their lives. The standard supports the Universal Principles for Advance Care Planning. 

The standard defines the information that should form part of a person’s shared care record for use whenever or wherever a person accesses services. PRSB is working with NHS Digital on the technical specifications that will ensure information at or near end of life can be shared between computers to support care. We are working with NHS England to achieve ISN status for the standard which will mandate it use and work will be undertaken in 2022 on a toolkit to help professionals implement the standard in systems. 

This standard defines the information that should be shared from 111 or 999 services when a person is referred onto another service. It also defines the information for a post event message to inform a person’s GP of their contact with 111 services and provide them with an effective summary. 

Caring for the growing numbers of people with diabetes is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare as “diabetes is the largest contributor to healthcare cost and reduced life expectancy in Europe”. However, with the right treatment and care, people can live a healthy life with much less risk of complications. Personalised care that is delivered across primary care, community services and hospital settings is key and sharing information to support joined up care is vital. 

PRSB developed standards for sharing diabetes information between people and professionals across all care settings. This includes self-reported data from the increasing number of digital tools available for self-management and medical technology (e.g., glucose monitors) to support remote patient monitoring. 

PRSB is now working with NHS Digital to specify how the information can be made computer readable, and how information can be held or moved between systems. 

This will support the consistent recording of information and will enable information to be sent and received between clinical systems (and digital apps and medical devices). The standards will then be piloted. 

PRSB undertook discovery work in 2021 to support future development of a nursing standard. Its aim is to improve quality and safety of care in key nurse-led areas, including care planning. It will reflect best practice and standardise documentation across different nursing settings, to free nurses up and give them more time to care. For example, the intention is to standardise information that a district nurse in a care home setting can access and share in the same way as a mental health or hospital nurse, with a focus on the person’s overall wellbeing.  

While the emphasis was nurse-led care, we spoke to professionals and people who use services to build consensus and support for the standards.
  

• Emphasis on nurse-led care but centred around the person rather than the speciality, diagnosis or setting  

• Building on good practices; standardised nursing models and terminologies to describe care assessments, interventions and outcomes  

In recent years, the role of community pharmacists has expanded and they now offer an increasing range of services. As such, it is important that pharmacists can digitally record people’s information and share efficiently with GP practices, which is exactly what PRSB’s community pharmacy standard does. This year, we published a draft update to this standard, covering 13 pharmacy standards and later in 2022, we will publish a further update so that the standard can be adapted to cover new services as they are introduced. 

This project is to establish data standards for an electronic anaesthetic chart. A workshop was undertaken to develop a draft standard for anaesthetic charts.  

The aim of this work was to review the eDischarge Summary Standard in the context of overprescribing and explore what supplementary implementation guidance could be provided to support the wider work of the NHS on tackling overprescribing. 

General research was undertaken to expand upon the existing implementation guidance and identify areas which might specifically support the overprescribing agenda. PRSB has developed supplementary implementation guidance for the eDischarge Summary Standard to provide guidance for system suppliers to help them implement the standard within their systems with tools and functions that will help to address overprescribing. 

The Core Information Standard (CIS) for shared care records was completed in July 2019 and defines the information that could or should be held about an individual in a shared care record, so that anyone caring for them will be able to access relevant information in a timely way. The standard is the basis of Integrated Care Systems’ (ICSs) shared care records and is critical for interoperability. Since publishing the standard, we have undertaken a review and made recommendations about how to speed up its adoption so that information can be shared more easily to improve care.