Clinical governance

In practice, clinical governance covers leadership and a culture of safety and quality improvement, clear roles, managing risk, making sure clinicians work within their scope of practice, recognising, reporting and learning from incidents, open disclosure when someone is harmed, and seeking feedback and handling complaints. These elements are set out in the Clinical Governance Standard of the National Safety and Quality Primary and Community Healthcare Standards, and in the NSQHS Standards used by hospitals.

For hospitals and day hospitals, the Commission has published a National Model for Clinical Governance that replaces its 2017 framework. For you, good clinical governance means the service knows what each clinician is qualified to do, welcomes your feedback and checks and improves its care. If something goes wrong, you should be told openly what happened.