Clinical governance development needs in health service staff

This paper reports on a study to ascertain the development needs in terms of clinical governance of 220 health service staff across all the key professions from primary and secondary care, including chief executives and clinical governance leads. Interviews suggested that the development of clinical governance was progressing through the structures created by the leads, and that there was considerable goodwill shown towards it in most of the interviews conducted. Of the participants 69 per cent had heard of clinical governance, though detailed knowledge was rare. The author suggests that development overall needs to be carried out using a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency approach where possible, perhaps using pathways of care. It needs also to take account of the expressed fears from medical staff of discussing their care in a multi-disciplinary setting, and of the two potential conflicting themes that are apparent to chief executives of change towards no-blame cultures, while encouraging account-ability and the recognition of risk.