Clinical Governance and its Role in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement

˜Clinical governance is a system through which NHS organizations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish.' As a new cognitive structure, it incorporated clinical audit, risk management, incident reporting and continuous professional development (CPD). It was described as a package that housed all the disparate and fragmented practice of quality improvement. The practice of medicine is a high-risk business. Every healthcare intervention must be risk assessed and continuously monitored to reduce any risk to patients. All incidents and near misses must be reported, recorded in the organizational memory and carefully analyzed. Protecting healthcare professionals from occupational hazards by immunization, improving and creating a safe work environment, assessing and reducing human factor-related incidents are recommended good practice.