Authority members and standards of clinical care.

Charlotte Williamson argues that in the post-white paper NHS authority members--and managers--will have to interest themselves more than they have previously in clinical care. In this first part of her article she defines individual and collective clinical care and non-clinical care, and discusses responsibility for standards in these different but overlapping aspects of care. In the second part of the article, to be published in our next issue, she will discuss setting standards locally.