Course Outline

Module 1:
Clinical Governance – What is it and why it adds value

In Module 1, we will look at the Clinical Governance method for achieving high quality care and the impact on patients, staff and organisations when it’s missing or ineffective. We will finish by thinking about the goals we wish to achieve with clinical governance within our own hospital.

Module overview:

1. Clinical Governance and its most important element.
2. Case Studies: Examples of avoidable harm when Clinical Governance fails.
3. Realising value: The clinical governance systems which improve practice and mitigate risk
4. Setting Clinical Governance goals and leading change in the key areas of partnering with patients to improve health outcomes and antimicrobial stewardship

Module 2:
Service design and delivery – having the right plan

In Module 2, we will look at the clinical governance processes used to design service delivery to achieve outcomes and support staff to successfully deliver high quality care.

Module overview:

1. Consumer, community participation and co-design
2. Service delivery goals and maximising service access
3. Designing the service environment to enhance the staff and patient experience
4. Standardising and guiding evidence-based practice

Module 3:
High performing staff

In module 3, we will look at the clinical governance processes used to ensure we have the workforce capability to deliver high quality care.

Module overview:

1. Healthy workplaces and happy staff
2. Recruiting the right people.
3. Credentialing and scope of practice
4. Roles and responsibilities – sharing accountability for good practice
5. Developing and improving staff performance

Module 4:
Risk, Incident and Complaint Management, the hallmark of a learning organisation

In Module 4, we will look at maximising the learning opportunities provided by risks, incidents and complaints to improve practice and drive a no blame culture.

Module overview:

1. Risk assessment, risk decision making and how to make risk registers useful.
2. Incident prevention: Avoiding negligence.
3. Incident and complaint reporting: Improving the documentation
4. Systems analysis investigation – the skill used by patient safety leaders
5. Open disclosure – improving the patient experience and minimising medico-legal risk

Module 5:
Quality and measuring Outcomes

In Module 5, we will take a deep dive into the role of quality improvement and outcome measurement.

Module overview:

1. Measuring what matters and reporting useful data
2. Clinical audit – adding value and removing waste
3. Prioritising improvement – work smarter
4. Accreditation preparation

Module 6:
Good Governance

In module 6, we will look at the role of governance committees in achieving safe, high quality care and meeting community expectation.

Module overview:

1. Governance expectation
2. Lean committees – opportunities to improve effectiveness.
3. Role, responsibility and accountability – what does a Terms of Reference look like.
4. Clinical governance systems – how do you know their working
5. Receiving and responding to reports – when to watch and when to act.