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Review concludes that trusts must use annual reports to give a 'much more rounded articulation' of where they are NHS trusts need to be more open about the performance of their boards and board members, according to a new study. Few NHS organisations included details on how performance was measured in their annual reports, the review by business and financial advisory firm Grant Thornton found. When asked how much explanation was given of how the board, committee and directors are evaluated for their performance, 56% of trusts (not including foundation trusts and primary care trusts) said...

Working by the sea has its perks, says Alice Pye, policy and communications officer at the Independent Living Association My role as a policy and communications officer for a user-led charity, the Independent Living Association , is really diverse and no two days are ever the same. Our core work focuses on supporting more than 1,500 disabled people and carers in West Sussex to organise and run their own care arrangements. This is done under local authority self-directed support schemes to enable them to live independently and participate as fully as they want to in society. My role is involves...

The government and health workforce have welcomed the findings, but almost three years on there is still much work to do It's nearly three years since we published the report of the Marmot review, Fair society; healthy lives , which set out the evidence demonstrating relationships between health, distribution of health and social and economic conditions. The report made many recommendations on how to reduce health inequalities across England. Since the report it's been enormously heartening to see widespread uptake and endorsement of the review's approach and recommendations. The government's...

In an open letter to all NHS practitioners, the chief executive of the Foundation Trust Network outlines the challenges the NHS must tackle following the imminent Francis report The NHS has made considerable improvements in the past decade, with demonstrable leaps in performance including reducing waiting lists and improving access times. However, there remain pockets of practice where the quality of patient care is unacceptable. In the latest state of health and social care report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), for example, 10% of NHS hospitals inspected "struggled to make the respect...

Dr Kunal Patel works for iheed – an Irish NGO dedicated to innovation in global health worker training The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is hit the snooze button on my alarm, but after that I focus on making a bowl of porridge with bananas, cinnamon and a dash of roasted hazelnut, before starting work at 9am. I usually begin the day catching up with emails, especially those that have come in overnight from international colleagues and partners. We constantly liaise via Skype and calls are commonplace between myself and colleagues in Ireland during the first part of the day. Mornings...

It's high risk to bring in an entirely new governing board in one go, explains a transition board member in response to claims that the College is not acting democratically Ray Jones claims that the College of Social Work will be undemocratic . This is untrue. We will be fully democratic from 2016 onwards and we will become progressively more democratic up to that point. From this year, half the social worker positions on our governing committees will be democratically elected and this proportion will gradually increase until we achieve full democracy in three years' time. It is widely...

Nikki Chapman runs the clinical side of a private healthcare practice. She explains what the best and worst part of her job is – and the importance of cake on a Friday afternoon Describe your role in one sentence I run the clinical side of a busy private healthcare practice. Why did you want to work in healthcare? I've always wanted to work in an environment where I could make a difference, it was healthcare or teaching and healthcare won. How do you want to see the sector change in the next five years? It would be nice to see the NHS find its feet again after so much change. There are lots...