Clinical Governance
What is Clinical Governance?
Clinical Governance – we all know about it, but what is it really, why does it matter, and how can we move beyond just ticking boxes to make it a practical, impactful part of our everyday work?
Clinical Governance ensures the safety, quality and effectiveness of patient care within healthcare organisations and is maintained via an overarching framework.
In pharmacy, clinical governance describes the accountability of pharmacy owners in ensuring that there is a strong culture and appropriate systems and processes in place to support the safety, quality and continuous improvement of all activities and services provided in or from a community pharmacy.
It involves relevant and appropriate relationships and responsibilities to be established between pharmacy owners, their staff, patients, consumers and other stakeholders to support good clinical outcomes for patients.
Patients can be confident that community pharmacies have effective systems in place to deliver safe, quality and patient-centred health care.
Resources
- Cold Chain Management - Application Guide
- Cold Chain Management - Quick Links
Podcast
Hear Chantelle Turner's insights on making clinical governance practical and how to implement in your pharmacy.
Why do we need Clinical Governance?
Australia is widely regarded as having a health system that is safe and supports good clinical outcomes through the provision of safe and high-quality care.
Patients, consumers, and the community trust pharmacy to provide safe, high-quality health care.
Community pharmacy has a responsibility for continuous improvement of the safety and quality of their services, and ensuring they are person centred, safe and effective.
Pharmacy Owners are ultimately accountable for the delivery of safe and quality services to their patients and communities and as pharmacy’s scope of practice continues to expand, clinical governance is vital for underpinning the safe and quality delivery of pharmacy practice.
The Clinical Governance framework
The Quality Care Pharmacy Program (QCPP) is an accreditation program and the clinical governance framework for community pharmacy in Australia. QCPP is an independent and impartial program that is designed to ensure that community pharmacies meet certain standards of safety, quality, and service.
Over 95% of all community pharmacies are accredited under QCPP and demonstrate Clinical Governance by:
- Engaging with the community to design and deliver services that meet their needs
- Ensuring systems and processes are in place for all activities and services that address patient safety and risk
- Having systems to record, review and report on safety and quality indicators
- Encouraging a culture in the pharmacy to continuously improve the quality of services delivered
- Having systems in place to actively seek feedback from consumers on all activities and services
Page last updated on: 20 August 2024