We’ve updated our BreastCheck charter and our mission and vision statements.
Our mission
To improve the health outcomes for women with breast cancer and reduce the number of women who die from breast cancer.
Our vision
We aim to provide high quality screening services to find and treat breast cancer at the earliest possible stage, to improve the quality of life for women diagnosed with breast cancer.
Our charter
Our charter tells you what you can expect when you use our breast screening and cancer services. It shows how you can help us make our services work better for you and for others.
What we did
We used what we learned from updating our CervicalCheck Charter and applied it to this project. This involved input from our behavioural scientist, communications and public health teams.
We worked with the BreastCheck team to make sure our information was accurate and reflected the aspirations of people working at BreastCheck for women using our services.
Four of our Patient and Public Partnership representatives reviewed the draft resources and provided feedback on the vocabulary, structure, layout and design. These women have different life experiences to inform their ideas, varying from having had breast cancer, working with vulnerable adults and teaching children with disabilities.
They encouraged us to:
- use shorter sentences and paragraphs
- remove or explain difficult words and phrases, or provide alternative plainer words
- use words that are welcoming and supportive
- include information that screening cannot find all cancers.
They also said that the draft versions were informative, well-structured and reassuring about BreastCheck’s role and services.
European certification for our BreastCheck services
We updated our charter and mission and vision statements as part of our recent application for re-certification from the European Reference Organisation (EUREF) for Quality Assured Breast Screening and Diagnostic Services. We received Level 4 re-certification which is the highest level of accreditation. This provides independent external reassurance of the high quality of our BreastCheck programme. This outcome demonstrates our continued commitment to excellence and shows that we are delivering the highest standards in breast cancer screening.
Next steps
We have sent the charter and mission and vision statements to our BreastCheck units. They will be displayed in the units so that women coming for screening can read them and know what to expect from our services.
We will continue to work to uphold our charter and will publish it in our programme reports as our statement of purpose.
We will use what we have learned to update our BowelScreen and Diabetic RetinaScreen charters.