SIGN Council

SIGN Council is the decision-making body for SIGN with overall responsibility for strategy and policy.

Members of SIGN Council are nominated by Royal Colleges or other professional organisations or committees, but also represent their specialty or discipline in a wider sense and consult with other specialist societies in their field. Members are selected to ensure that diversity and inclusion are addressed across SIGN Council. Public partners are identified from an open call for interested individuals followed by a robust selection process.

Members of SIGN Council determine the overall direction of SIGN’s development and play a key role in shaping the SIGN guideline programme.

All members of SIGN Council make yearly declarations of interest according to our Policy on Declaration of Competing Interests, which can be found in the Register of Interests. Updates are recorded after each SIGN Council meeting.

SIGN Council meets four times a year and the papers are made available after each meeting. Meetings are both in person and virtual to ensure effective functioning and engagement. To support SIGN’s commitment to openness and transparency SIGN Council meetings are open to stakeholders to observe.

We welcome attendance, at SIGN Council meetings, of members of the public. We hope that by observing a meeting, it will help you to understand how SIGN works and how we are striving to improve the quality of healthcare for people in Scotland by reducing variation in practice and outcomes through the development and dissemination of national clinical guidelines. Our guidelines contain recommendations for effective practice based on current evidence.

Our public observer factsheet may be useful for you so you know what to expect from the meeting.

If you are interested in observing a meeting please contact sign@sign.ac.uk.