National Clinical Excellence Awards - Reward, recognition and retention of highly-skilled doctors and dentists

The arrangements for applying for and assessing applications received from UK doctors applying for national Clinical Excellence Awards have been under review since 2013. Plans are now progressing -new arrangements are planned for introduction in 2022. Our previous research directly informed the development and organisation of the current ACCEA arrangements.

Our previous research identified the fundamentally robust nature of the present organisational arrangements, but proposed specific guidance (for example in respect of the number and nature of assessors who should consider individual applications, and the overall reliability of scores generated) to inform development of the assessment scheme.

That guidance was accepted and implemented in 2016.

Fundamental to the success of any new scheme will be obtaining 'buy-in' from key stakeholders regarding the definition of what currently constitutes 'excellence' in respect of clinical practice, taking account of the need for a scheme which is broad-ranging in scope but which is also 'high-risk' in assessment terms, being the basis for allocation of significant amounts of public money.

So, assessment arrangements need to consider the administrative, financial, and personnel resource available to support the scheme, relevant national policy and guidance, and the need for robust, equitable, and defensible assessment arrangements.

The aim of our research is to undertake literature based research to align our research to assessments arrangement in other UK senior public sector performance bonus schemes; to use recent ACCEA data to inform the development of a revised scoring scheme, providing clear guidance on approaches which will achieve valid and reliable assessment of applications; and to disseminate our finding in scientific journals and conferences, and to key stakeholders.

We will: (i) undertake a brief review of relevant literature relating to scoring of applications in other similar public sector senior performance bonus schemes, and other key recent relevant literature (ii) inform the development of a new assessment schedule, taking account of revised domains of performance as advised by ACCEA, providing clear evidence-based descriptions of anchor points in scoring schedules.

This will include interviews and structured discussion with senior ACCEA personnel and other key stakeholders and an online Delphi process; development, in conjunction with ACCEA personnel and other suitably informed individuals, of 20 training cases based on a range of historical applications; use of these cases in a shadow assessment and scoring exercise, and as the basis for training of future ACCEA assessors; re-analysis of historical ACCEA data and scores (ii) We will undertake dissemination and communication of our findings and training materials to key stakeholders, acting in conjunction with ACCEA.

Our work will be informed by a bespoke patient and public involvement group who have fed into the design of this proposal and who will provide guidance throughout the duration of the project.