Clinicians on the board: do they affect the patient experience in English NHS hospitals?

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the impact of clinical participation (i.e. physician directors and nurse directors) on patient experience in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals and, separately, in the NHS trusts and foundation trusts.Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypotheses, the authors use an OLS estimator fitted with a fixed-effects model for panel data for a sample of English NHS hospitals from 2014 to 2018.FindingsThe results show that physician directors and nurse directors have no relationship with NHS hospitals’ patient experience. After splitting the sample, the results remain the same for the NHS foundation trusts. For the NHS trusts, the results report that physician directors are positively and significantly associated with patient experience, while nurse directors have no relationship.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the association between clinician directors and patient experience. Overall, this paper contributes to the existing literature, especially in the context of public hospitals.