This article from the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team (NCGST) outlines the development of quality concerns since the NHS was founded in 1948. It traces the development of clinical governance as a means of achieving continuous quality improvement and describes what the implementation of clinical governance means for patients and professionals. It analyses features of the cultural shift necessary to underpin quality improvement initiatives and describes with practical examples the constituents of the culture necessary for successful clinical governance. Future articles in this series will address other issues around clinical governance and will explain the model being followed by delegates to the NCGST’s Clinical Governance Development Programme as they implement clinical governance “on the ground”.
This article from the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team (NCGST) outlines the development of quality concerns since the NHS was founded in 1948. It traces the development of clinical governance as a means of achieving continuous quality improvement and describes what the implementation of clinical governance means for patients and professionals. It analyses features of the cultural shift necessary to underpin quality improvement initiatives and describes with practical examples the constituents of the culture necessary for successful clinical governance. Future articles in this series will address other issues around clinical governance and will explain the model being followed by delegates to the NCGST's Clinical Governance Development Programme as they implement clinical governance "on the ground".
Effective appraisal is one of the key underpinning systems to allow the practical implementation of clinical governance. Between March and July 2002, over 800 GPs have attended the national GP “Training the Appraisers” Programme, funded by the Department of Health, and run by the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team (CGST) in partnership with Edgecumbe Consulting Ltd. The one day programme, which includes practical “real life” appraisal sessions for GPs, is well on the way to meeting its remit of training 900 GP appraisers (an average of three appraisers per PCT) in 2002. Once they have completed the course, trained appraisers can begin the process of conducting the first round of appraisals in their local primary care organisations. The GP Appraisal Programme recognises the potential of an effective system of appraisal to develop over time, so that patients can be confident that their family doctor is supported in taking regular, structured steps to ensure they are identifying and fulfilling their professional development needs and thereby enhancing the delivery of high quality care.
In our previous article we looked at the history of quality development and discussed how the implementation of clinical governance provides the opportunity to begin the cultural shift necessary to underpin quality in the modern NHS. This article begins an explanation of the model of quality improvement followed by delegates to the Clinical Governance Development Programme by looking at the service review process delegate teams undertake.
Under-performance in a health organisation is often due to its board lacking a coherent strategic direction for the organisation itself and for the clinical care it provides (Wall et al., 2002). Boards in the National Health Service (NHS) are constantly aware that they have to achieve a balance between their resources and the needs of the communities they serve. In addition, the scientific, technological, political and economic factors, which influence health and social care, are interacting in ever more complex ways (Plsek and Greenhalgh, 2001). So, being flexible and responsive to change is a major task for NHS boards; achieving it successfully calls for effective leadership skills. If boards are to bring about strategic change in their organisations and achieve the modernisation agenda, it will require multi-level organisational interventions (Ferlie and Shortell, 2001).Strategic leadership in NHS organisations can be defined as the creation of coherent organisations where change is managed systematically and learning is identified. According to Stacy (2000, p. 43), strategic change is concerned with:. . . what business the organisation should be involved in and how the corporate level manages that business.Clearly, corporate governance issues such as controls assurance play a part here, but so too do clinical considerations. Therefore, a role of the CGST is to encourage excellent clinical governance within a corporate framework. Governance: corporate and clinicalCorporate governance has been defined as:The system by which an organisation is directed and controlled, at its most senior levels, in order to achieve its objectives and meet the necessary standards of accountability, probity and openness (Controls Assurance Standard, 2002, p. 1).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.