Effective Clinical Governance: A Report on Healthcare Practices

This report delves into the concept of effective clinical governance, a worldwide system ensuring healthcare organizations continuously improve service quality and provide high-quality care. It highlights key principles like setting a clear vision, developing strategic direction, and fostering a patient-centric culture. The report discusses the 'National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards' and their eight standards. It also describes the implementation of clinical governance in a healthcare organization, emphasizing its positive impact on leadership, teamwork, and patient care. Furthermore, the report explores training programs, staff engagement, and the use of clinical auditing to enhance quality. The author concludes by highlighting the benefits of clinical governance for healthcare professionals, including improved risk management and the provision of high-quality treatments. The report references several studies to support its claims, offering a comprehensive overview of clinical governance's role in modern healthcare.

Running head: EFFECTIVE CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
Effective Clinical Governance
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Clinal governance is a world-wide system through which healthcare organizations such as
the National Health Service (NHS) are accountable for improving the quality of healthcare
service continuously while ensuring a high quality care by creating facilitative environment
that promotes best outcomes(Donaldson, 2018).
The pillars or principles of an effective Clinical Governance are as follows: To set a clear
vision, develop a strategic direction and building an influential organizational culture that
delivers consistent, safe and high-quality clinical care to people, it helps to lead a transparent
organizational culture by effective communication of service values with patients and also
facilitating patient engagement by providing them sufficient access to healthcare(Leroux,
McPherson & Richardson, 2018). It helps in ensuring robust clinical governance arrangement
and its implementation across the service for effectively supporting and empowering the
workforce, and also assist the health practitioners in providing safe and quality health service
to patients. It helps in understanding the underlying clinical risk factors for providing
healthcare service, ensuring proper addressing and activity of the controls and mitigation
strategies (Jones & Killion, 2017). It helps in monitoring and evaluation of every aspect of
health care through regular assessment and reviewing of the clinical quality and safety
performance data.
“The National Safety and Quality Health Service(NSQHS)” was developed by
the commission in collaboration with the Australian government for protecting the
public from harm and to improve the quality of health service provided to them(Boyd
& Sheen, 2014). The NSQHS consist of eight standards namely:
Clinical governance: which aims to ensure that there are sufficient health service
organization present for maintaining and improving the reliability, quality and safety
of health care

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Partnership with consumers: aims to ensure the satisfaction of consumers and
partners associated with the design, delivery and evaluation of healthcare
service(Jensen, 2020)
Prevention of healthcare associated infection: it aims to reduces the risk of patients
from getting healthcare associated infection, and limit the development of
antimicrobial resistance through appropriate prescription of medications
Medication safety: for ensuring the safe and appropriate administration or
prescription of medications by the nurses or clinicians.
Comprehensive care: aims to ensure that every patient receive comprehensive
healthcare services which will meet their individual needs and requirements and
facilitate patient well-being.
Communicating for Safety: for ensuring effective communication between the
patient with the clinicians or nurses
Blood management: which aims to ensure that blood of the patient is safely handled
and appropriately managed
Recognising and responding to acute deterioration: it helps to ensure acute
deterioration in the physical, mental or cognitive condition of the patient is recognised
promptly and appropriate action is taken
The clinical governance guidelines has been implemented in the healthcare
organiation where I work. Everyone wants to work in an organization having a strong
and positive work culture or work environment(Van Zwanenberg & Harrison, 2018).
Clinical governance provided our organization with such a safe and secure work
environment which fosters the well being of the members associated with it. The
delivery of clinical governance in our healthcare organization brought new
approaches to leadership. An organization benefits from an effective leadership since

EFFECTIVE CLINICAL GOVERNANCE 4
a well led organization will better identify their visions, mission, values and work
towards them. A good leadership also emphasises on team work. Clinical governance
provided strategic planning for the health professionals to deliver improved quality of
patient care, provision of better decision making skills for the nurses, better patient
engagement and building a therapeutic relationship with the patients(Northrop, 2019).
It also helped in enhanced risk assessment, data analysis and staff management and
process management.
The organization has developed various training and educational programs to
help the staffs recognize the values of clinical governance in the workplace. The
purpose of such program is to educate and train the members, enhancing their skills
and knowledge, making them aware of the principles and standards of clinical
governance, so that they can make the best possible contribution, individually and
collectively for improving the overall healthcare system(Keramat et al, 2017). The
organization also ensures that all the staff members feels valued when sharing their
individual views and opinions for improvement and innovation. For example, on a
particular day, there was long delay for the initial referral and poor patient focus in
adolescent mental health service. To fight against this situation, the multidisciplinary
team worked with the healthcare professionals to ensure shared referral, assessment
and production of management guidelines. A triage system was also developed for
reduce waiting time of the patients.
Clinical auditing is a strategy which the clinical governance framework utilise
for enhancing the quality of patient care. It is an ongoing process of reviewing the
clinical standards and is a productive part of clinical practice. Through the audit, the
staff members or clinicians become aware of their overall performance which helps
to assess themselves better, and bring productive changes among themselves which

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will bring a positive change in the progression of the health organization(Price et al,
2020).
All the members in the healthacare organizations are aware of the principles
and standards of clinical governance. The healthcare professionals felt that the
implementation of clinical governance in a healthacare organization is a good idea for
ensuring equity and accessibility of healthcare service to everyone, along with better
risk management and provision of high quality treatment for the patients(Panteghini
& Rogers, 2019). They are dedicated to provide patient centred care, giving adequate
value to the needs and requirements of the patients.
In conclusion, it can be said that the the whole concept of clinical governance
is useful for the health organizations to provide efficient healthcare to patients and
review their position on risk management. The staff members are educated and
trained to ensure is low carelessness among them while treating patient, thereby
reducing accidents. The clinical governance brings a positive alteration in the
healthcare organization providing better leadership abilities and decision making
skills within the healthcare professionals, better assessment and analysis of patient
health achieved through collaboration and teamwork.

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REFERENCE
Boyd, L., & Sheen, J. (2014). The National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards
requirements for Orientation and induction within Australian Healthcare: a review of
the literature. Asia Pacific journal of health management, 9(3), 31-37.
Donaldson, L. (2018). Clinical governance: a quality concept. In Clinical governance in
primary care (pp. 1-16). CRC Press.
Jensen, F. (2020). Partnering with consumers through NSQHS standards. Journal of Health
Information and Libraries Australasia, 1(1), 18-19.
Jones, A., & Killion, S. (2017). title Clinical governance for Primary Health Networks.
Keramat, A., Olfati, F., Asefzadeh, S., & Changizi, N. (2017). A Model for Safe Delivery
Based on Clinical Governance. Journal of Hospital, 16(2), 58-69.
Leroux, P., McPherson, S., & Richardson, P. (Eds.). (2018). Clinical Effectiveness in
Psychotherapy and Mental Health: Strategies and Resources for the Effective
Clinical Governance. Routledge.
Northrop, M. (2019). Decision making and clinical governance. Transition to Registered
Practice: From Student to Qualified Nurse, 121.
Panteghini, M., & Rogers, B. B. (2019). Clinical Governance Should Be a Priority When
Care Delivery Systems Are Disrupted/In Reply. Archives of Pathology & Laboratory
Medicine, 143(9), 1046-1046.
Price, T., Tredinnick-Rowe, J., Walshe, K., Tazzyman, A., Ferguson, J., Boyd, A., ... &
Bryce, M. (2020). Reviving clinical governance? A qualitative study of the impact of

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professional regulatory reform on clinical governance in healthcare organisations in
England. Health Policy.
Van Zwanenberg, T., & Harrison, J. (2018). Clinical governance in primary care. CRC
Press.