How a clinician internally defines who and what a patient is has considerable influence in the long term care and outcomes for that patient. On the wall of a medical administrator in a Queensland Hospital are the following words adapted from one of Gandhi’s sayings but they seem applicable:
Our patients are the most important visitors to our hospital. They are not dependent on us. We are dependent on them. They are not an interruption to our work. They are the purpose for it. They are not outsiders to our Hospital. They are part of it. We are not doing them a favour by serving them. They are doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.
It is alleged that some 1 in 10 hospital patients are harmed in hospital and some 1 in 50 are seriously harmed. Interestingly, various authors have claimed that 1 in 2 of those adverse events are preventable. The causes of adverse outcomes tend in the main not to be related to clinical skills but more reated to problems in systems management including communication such as legibility, adequacy of handovers and a raft of medication and prescribing errors. This site will explore these and other areas related to clinical governance.
In broad terms clinical governance relates to the recognition and management of:
- Education and Training
- Clinical audit
- Clinical effectiveness
- Research and development
- Openness
- Risk management
“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 in clinical care will flourish.” (Scally and Donaldson, 1998)
