The clinical content of NHS trust board meetings: an initial exploration

To differentiate between English NHS trust board meetings according to the percentage of clinical content and to explore which characteristics of board meetings might explain this.

Definition of scoring system for clinical content. Scoring of minutes for a random sample of 60 trusts. Qualitative analysis of a sub-sample, generated hypotheses about factors leading to higher percentage of clinical items was undertaken; testing of hypotheses in a longitudinal sample of minutes from 24 trusts over 1 year.

Clinical content varied from 2% to 30%. Boards with a more clinical focus tended to link other issues including finance to clinical issues; have non-executive directors able to question board executives openly; make less use of acronyms in minutes; had more liaison with social services; and accepted questions from the public.

Counting items in board minutes has prima facie validity as a means of defining how clinically focussed board meetings are, although more research is required to refine the method. The present method of analysing board minutes may provide one way of assessing board culture.

Directors of nursing can help focus trust board meetings on clinical matters. Further research is required to determine whether greater clinical content in trust board meetings has impacts on clinical practice or organizational performance.