[Margaret Pilkington]

I know what you are saying Doug, I was instrumental in the teaching of the concept of benchmarking......well, there were 8 of us for BHRV NHS Trust, but we had regular meetings and the North west co-ordinator took the findings of our work forward to the National forum.

We looked at different aspects of care and each ward and department had representatives.......the Benchmarks were completed and we then fed back to our own co-ordinators......good practices were identified and put into place across the trust. Not all improvements had big costs attached to them......some of the improvements were attitudinal.....we just got people to think in different ways about what they were doing.....and not to always do things in a certain way 'because it had always been done like that'......I had great hopes of the process......and I have wondered how things have progressed since I retired.