Good Practice Guides
We produce a range of standards, guidance and accompanying resources to support surgical teams and ensure they are consistently delivering the highest standards of patient care.
Watch our video below to find out more about our guidance can support your development and that of your team.
The RCS is carrying out a programme of work that focuses on developing brief, practical guidance and accompanying resources to support surgeons on key aspects of their practice. Our Good Practice Guides elaborate on the principles of our core standards document, Good Surgical Practice, and aim to facilitate its implementation.
Our guidance and resources can provide support in the areas of ethical and legal concerns, team working and leadership, personal development and service improvement.
- COVID-19: Good Practice for Surgeons and Surgical Teams: this guidance, issued April 2020, covers broad recommendations on adapting surgical services, what to take into account when working outside one's comfort zone, caring for patients and protecting the workforce.
Ethical and legal concerns
- Duty of Candour: ensuring clinicians are open and honest with patients when things go wrong with their care.
- Consent: Supported Decision -Making: principles for working with patients through a process of supported decision-making.
- Good Surgical Practice: our surgical care team guidance aims to help employers, surgeons and other healthcare professionals develop models of care that utilise the surgical care team in a consistent manner.
- End of Life Care: this document provides advice, guidance and support to surgeons and service providers on many important aspects of end of life care.
- Ethical Priciples of working overseas: this guide contains a set of overarching ethical principles as well as practical advice on how to approach differing political and healthcare circumstances in various host nations.
- Caring for Patients who Refuse Blood: this document provides guidance for operating on Jehovah's Witnesses, or other patients who refuse blood transfusions.
- Best practice for documentation of surgical procedures: GIRFT has worked with NHS Resolution, RCS England, ASGBI, and BAETS to create the guides, outlining how clear documentation of procedures can support the resolution process and provide the best care and satisfactory outcomes for patients.
Team working and leadership
- Surgical Care Team Guidance: guidance on the introduction and effective use of extended roles in the surgical team.
- The High Performing Surgical Team: this guide highlights skills and processes which contribute significantly to the performance of a team.
- Surgical Leadership: a practical guide to effective leadership of surgical teams.
- Managing Disruptive Behaviours in Surgery: this guide outlines the causes of disruptive behaviours and recommends a series of interventions.
Professional Development
- Mentoring: practical guidance for surgeons acting as or seeking a mentor.
- Using Data to Support Change in Clinical Practice: guidance for surgeons and surgical services on the effective collection and interpretation of healthcare data.
- The Surgeon as an Expert Witness: practical guidance for surgeons who act as expert witnesses.
- Supporting Surgeons after Adverse Events: advice for surgeons and members of the surgical team after adverse events.
- Working in the independent sector: practical advice for surgeons working or planning to work in the private sector.
Service Improvement
- Morbidity and Mortality Meetings: a guide to setting up, running and participating in high quality surgical M&M meetings.
- Outpatient clinics: principles of good practice for outpatient departments.
- Surgical Innovation, New Techniques and Technologies: a guide for implementing new techniques and technologies safely and effectively.
- Quality improvement in surgery: basic principles and a trainee’s guide.
- Sustainability in the operating theatre: recommendations to improve the environmental impact of the operating theatre.
- Robotic-assisted surgery: A pathway to the future: broad framework for the safe and sustainable expansion of robotic assisted surgery in the UK.
Further information and queries
You can get in touch with us by emailing PSD@rcseng.ac.uk
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