The Clinical Governance and Safety Department sits within the medical director's office and provides a comprehensive clinical and non-clinical risk management service to the Trust.
Patient and staff safety is a key part of this, incorporating clinical risk, health and safety, complaints and clinical ethics. The clinical governance role is underpinned by the clinical audit and outcomes services.
This joined up approach ensures that we have a direct link into patient experience as well as the broader clinical governance, monitoring and improvement processes of the Trust.
The overall aim is to ensure that clinical and non-clinical risks are managed appropriately to improve safety for patients, families and staff.
Risk management
Part of this role is working closely with the clinical teams and corporate areas to identify their risks, acting as a resource when necessary and providing expert advice and support on all aspects of risk management.
Identifying and reporting safety issues early ensures that the appropriate controls can be put in place to reduce the likelihood of those risks occurring again.
The team is also responsible for co-ordinating the evidence required to demonstrate compliance with some of the external assessments and targeted reviews on behalf of the Trust. These include assessments by the Care Quality Commission, Health & Safety Executive and under the NHS Litigation Authority's risk management standards.
Risk related elements of the Standards for Better Health, or recommendations from the National Patient Safety Agency for example, are integrated as far as possible with existing work and systems that the Trust has in place. Working with other corporate departments and clinical teams to achieve this, helps to prevent duplication and maintains a consistent approach.
Auditing
The ability to audit and have measures to assess the outcome and effectiveness of these controls, supports the patient safety agenda, while ensuring that learning from patient safety issues can be easily shared across the organisation to help improve safe care for patients.
