Clinical Governance

Question 1

What is clinical governance?

Answer 1

Clinical governance is a framework through which NHS organisations are accountable for continually improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence can flourish.

It can be broken down into 3 categories:

1. High standards of care
2. Transparent responsibility and accountability
3. Continual improvement

Question 2

What is clinical governance based upon?

Answer 2

It is based upon 7 pillars

Question 3

Name and describe the 7 pillars for clinical governance.

Answer 3

P A R T I E S

P - Patients and public involvement :
This pillar aims to ensure that services available are appropriate to the population that they serve.
Feedback from the patients is a good way to assess and reflect on how good services are. Feedback can be gained via questionnaires, PALS and advice from the public who serve as governors on the hospital boards. This allows us to implement positive change to the services we provide, making services more relevant and improving outcomes.

A - Audit:
Ensuring current clinical practice is continually monitored. This allows us to identify areas where clinical practice needs to be improved on, make appropriate changes and see if those changes have improved the care that we provide.

R - Risk management:
The aim of risk management is to have robust systems to minimise, monitor and reduce the risk of serious harm to patients and service users. When errors do occur, we must learn from these errors. The healthcare system must provide a blame free culture ensuring anyone can report mistakes without fear of persecution. These events can then be reported as incidents and management and clinical staff can work towards developing a risk assessment in order to prevent recurrence and ensure excellent care in the future.

T - Training and education:
As healthcare professionals we must keep our knowledge and clinical skills up to date. The health service should support CPD allocating time for study leave, attending conferences or courses. Annual appraisals for healthcare staff ensures all weaknesses are identified and objectives are put in place highlighting new opportunities for CPD.

I - Information and technology:
Healthcare services must ensure that they are complying with current data protection regulations. Data and information must be documented and stored correctly, protecting the confidentiality of patients.

E - Effectiveness and research:
Clinical effectiveness is ensuring the best possible outcome is sought for a particular patient. We do this by ensuring our practice is supported by a strong evidence base which can improve the quality of care for our patients. Conducting clinical research allows us to develop new and more effective ways to identify, diagnose, treat and prevent disease

S - Staff management:
Ensures that staff are being used to their full potential and that the right people are being recruited into the right roles. This ensures they can be motivated to continually develop services for the benefit of our patients. Where performance concerns are identified, staff should be supported and encouraged to improve, Keeping staff supported in their roles encourages the retention of staff