Responsibility Deal
Friday 12th October 2012
To coincide with World Arthritis Day on 12 October 2012, the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society is today launching a new Responsibility Deal. This is our attempt to demonstrate how people with the chronic autoimmune disease Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and those involved in making the decisions that affect their care and services – including healthcare professionals, healthcare managers and policymakers – can all work together to make a real difference to clinical outcomes across the UK.
The Responsibility Deal is the result of a consultation exercise we held earlier this year, inviting comments from everyone with an interest and connection to the disease. We had a quite extraordinary level of response with nearly seven-hundred submissions received in total from NRAS members and the public. We have summarised this information into a series of eight practical pledges targeted at four key audiences and strived to set out the underlying policy-context. The pledges are as follows:
Patient pledges
• I pledge to become more knowledgeable about RA and take greater responsibility for managing my disease.
• I pledge to work closely with my healthcare professionals to ensure that I can lead a better quality of life.
Healthcare professional pledges
• I pledge to continue to improve my knowledge about RA to optimise the experience of the RA patient’s journey through healthcare services.
• I pledge to understand my RA patients and their individual needs, so that I can support them to help them manage their condition more effectively.
NHS service manager pledges
• I pledge to help improve the capacity and ability of rheumatology healthcare professionals to offer and deliver evidence-based, high-quality care to their RA patients.
• I pledge to look at new ways to better meet the needs of RA patients.
Policymaker pledges
• I pledge to increase my understanding of RA and to raise its profile amongst other policymakers.
• I pledge to help develop policy that will raise the standards of care and quality of life for people with RA.
Anyone can demonstrate their support and we encourage everyone with a connection to this chronic, disabling autoimmune disease to do so. Signing up is an indication of your willingness to help NRAS work together with the entire rheumatology community to raise awareness and understanding of RA, improve access to services and medicines, empower people to self manage their condition more effectively, and, ultimately, lead to a better quality of life for all people with the disease.
Please take a few moments to read the pledges contained in the Responsibility Deal document and show your support and help spread the word by signing the accompanying e-petition available on our website here.
Click here to read the Responsibility Deal press release.