Clinical Governance: Staffing and Clinical Audit

Running head: CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Clinical audit:...................................................................................................................................2
Reasons for undertaking clinical audits:..........................................................................................3
Clinical audit and its association with that of safety and quality care to patients:..........................4
An example about how I can manage clinical audit:.......................................................................4
Steps of clinical audit that I would be following:............................................................................5
Risk management:...........................................................................................................................6
Staffing and staff management:.......................................................................................................7
Impacts of low staffing on the quality and safety of patient care:...................................................8
Nursing skill mix and impact on the patient safety:........................................................................9
Ways I can ensure effective staffing:.............................................................................................10
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................11
References:....................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction:
Clinical governance is a framework by which different types of NHS organizations are
found to be accountable for continuously improving their quality of their services towards
patients and also safeguarding high standards by developing an environment which influences
the flourishing of clinical care. Seven important pillars mainly act as the foundation of clinical
governance in the healthcare centers and this is seen to include clinical effectiveness, audit, risk
management, using information and information technology, education and training, staffing and
staff management and also patient and public involvement (Van et al. 2018). Studies are of the
opinion that clinical governance helps in ensuring that every service users should get the right
care at the right time from that of the right person and that the best care is provided at the first
time only (Veenstra et al. 2017). Clinical governance is the responsibility of every member of the
staffs that include doctors, nurses, radiographers, physiotherapists, laboratory staffs, cleaners,
porters and also different administrative staffs (Olds et al. 2017). This assignment would be
mainly focusing on two important pillars of clinical governance like staffing and staff
management and also clinical audit. It would discuss the importance of these pillars in providing
safe and quality care for the patients and also for the other staffs in the healthcare centre.
Clinical audit:
The term clinical audit can be used for describing the procedure of assessing the clinical
practices against the standards. It can be defined as the clinically led quality improvement
process that helps in improving patient care as well as patient outcomes through the systematic
review of care against explicit criteria and also to take actions for improving care when standards

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are not met (Prenestini et al. 2015). Studies have explained this procedure as the selection of
different aspects of the structure, procedures as well as outcomes of care that are systematically
evaluated against that of the explicit criteria (Cho et al. 2016). When required, improvements are
also seen to be implemented at an individual, team as well as organizational level and then the
care is re-evaluated for confirming the improvements.
Reasons for undertaking clinical audits:
Clinical audit is actually a tool which is used for discovering how well the clinical care is
being provided by the healthcare professionals and also helps in learning if there are any
opportunities for improvement. Therefore, when clinical audit is conducted, it can help in
understanding the knowledge or skill gap of the professionals and accordingly further actions are
taken for helping the professionals overcome their barriers and bridge the knowledge gap. It not
supports professionals in their career growth and helping them to develop expertise skills but
also enable them to provide high quality and safe care to patients (Fardazar et al. 2015). It can
also be utilized in association with different changes in the care provision and also for
confirming that whether the current practices are able to meet the expected levels of the
performance (Welp et al. 2015). Firstly, clinical audit helps in offering a way for assessing and
improving patient care and also for upholding professional standards and “doing the right
things”. Secondly, through clinical audits healthcare professionals are also able to identify the
risks that are present within the service and accordingly steps are taken to mitigate the risks and
ensuring safe care services to the patients (Paton et al. 2015). Third, regular audit activity helps
in creating a culture of quality improvement in that of the clinical setting. Fourth, many of the
studies are of the opinion that clinical audit is educational for the participants and it involves
being up-to-date with the different evidence based good practice. Fifth, it also provides an