Resources

This framework helps health services build strong clinical governance systems. It’s designed to improve care quality, safety, and equity across all populations. It encourages a learning and responsive system that listens to patients, whānau (families), and communities. If you are implementing clinical governance in Aotearoa New Zealand, you’ll need to be aware of this framework.

Listen to David Naughton, CEO of Enable WA – the largest disability service provider in regional Western Australia, explain how the organisation has deliberately embraced a deeper understanding and appreciation of clinical governance across all aspects of disability service delivery, including support work, allied health, and high intensity supports.

The critical role of nurses in clinical care and quality is well recognised. This integrative literature review used the Joanna Briggs Institute (2020) Critical Appraisal Tools to examine nurse empowerment. Findings show that empowered nurses are more likely to deliver quality care through better decision-making, greater autonomy, and a stronger professional identity. This, in turn, supports improved patient outcomes, higher job satisfaction, better adherence to safety protocols, and fewer medical errors.

As a hospital CEO, Bernadette McDonald did a lot of listening. But when her organisation decided to create a ‘patient expectations’ document, she realised she didn’t always ‘hear’. This lightbulb revelation led to significant change.

This systematic review explores the relationship between management practices and care quality, and finds that hospitals with management systems focused on effective operations, monitoring, target-setting and supportive human resources consistently outperform their peers on clinical quality metrics. We might call this the ‘clinical governance and management system’ within which both boards and executives must play their role for success. The authors describe roles for boards and executives.

Leadership and culture are pillars of any clinical governance framework and often cited as the key framework components.   But Dr. Kedar Mate and Josh Clark from IHI challenge us to understand the role that systems play in good care.  They argue that many improvement initiatives fail due to systemic issues rather than a lack of vision or communication from leaders, and advocate for a focus on ‘operating systems’ that support good care.

This qualitative study aims to identify key aspects of CEO participation in quality and safety programs that characterise effective leadership for quality improvement (QI). 

Is there a recipe for creating a high-performing health service? Of course there is! We don’t have to look too far into the literature to find multiple sources of evidence on high performance. This study, from the 2015 ‘vault,’ is particularly useful as it identifies seven clear themes from a systematic review of the qualitative literature on high-performing hospitals.

In this webinar, Beverley Sutton (CEO of HEAL and AICG) will take a look at what is likely to impact care in 2025 and what you will need to do to support your staff to get the best from their professional development opportunities to improve patient outcomes.

Evidence supporting the association between high organisational performance and the presence of clinicians in senior leadership and management roles is steadily growing. Clinical involvement in organisational leadership has been positively linked to operational efficiency and care quality improvements. This in-depth research report from The Health Foundation looks at what the NHS can gain from strengthening clinical leadership and management, the challenges involved in doing so and how they might be overcome.