From Ward to Board

What did we do in this project?

The findings from the final phase of work, Putting quality first in the boardroom, was published in April 2010. It considered a number of key questions:

• Why do boards find it difficult to engage with quality?

• What styles of leadership has most influence on quality?

• What type of organisational culture sustains engagement with quality?

• What systems and processes support a focus on quality?

Findings from the first phase of the project were published in February 2009 in From Ward to Board, at which time we also produced a handbook with the Burdett Trust for Nursing: The Nurse Executives' Handbook: leading the business of caring from ward to board.

Why are we interested in this piece of work?

As an organisation with a track record of running nurse leadership programmes, The King's Fund was commissioned by the Burdett Trust to:

• support nurse executives and their boards by giving feedback to identify good practice and to explore, facilitate and develop models for high-quality, board-level clinical engagement

• review and interpret this work for a wider audience

• disseminate learning to a wide audience and encourage others to follow best practice.