The Charity is leading this consultation to help improve prostate cancer services across the UK. We want to identify the best standards of care so that men know what they deserve and to help healthcare providers supply the best services.

We will use our findings across the UK to feed into prostate cancer guidelines and ensure men know what standards of care they should expect.

In England and Wales, the findings of this work will be used to push for the speedy development of a quality standard for prostate cancer by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). A quality standard is a set of statements which set out what quality care should look like. They can be used by patients to check they are receiving the best standard of care and by health professionals and healthcare commissioners to check that they are providing the best quality services possible.

Unfortunately, we have recently found that the development of this important standard will be delayed until 2013. In the past, when guidelines on prostate cancer care have been delayed it has led to men with prostate cancer reporting a significantly worse experience of care than men with other common cancers^[1]. We do not want to repeat the same mistakes.

In Scotland, we will use our findings to push for improvements in the Quality Performance Indicators (QPIs) for prostate cancer, which are currently being developed. We will also use our findings to ensure the views of men with prostate cancer are included within the Indicators. QPIs are important guidelines which set out the standard of care men should expect in Scotland.