Resources

The Knowledge and Implementation Hub has gathered evidence on why clinical governance matters in aged care, along with learning and practical resources. These knowledge packages can support the aged care workforce in delivering safe, high-quality care to older Australians. If the concept of clinical governance is new to you, this short click-through learning module provides a simple overview of its role and value to the aged care organisation.

We know the critical role that healthcare governing boards play in driving improvements in care quality and safety.  Cultivating board understanding and focus can be challenging, however.  We are still a long way from all boards having the same comfort with clinical governance as they do with corporate governance. This article suggests four key actions to support boards to enact their responsibilities for care quality.

In Australian health services, roles that support consumer safety are a mix of trained specialists, people who evolve on the job and those who struggle through the basics with little opportunity for development. In the UK,  the NHS has created a new role of ‘patient safety specialist’, introduced to bring a more structured, professional approach to patient safety. This evaluation article seeks to understand the professionalisation of patient safety, with implications for the further development of patient safety specialists in the UK and other countries. 

The Global Patient Safety Report 2024 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) highlights the critical global issue of patient safety, recognising it as a key component of quality healthcare that still requires significant evolution. The report's main goals are to raise awareness of patient safety risks, provide insights into the scope of the problem and set the stage for global initiatives to reduce harm to patients in healthcare settings.  

As finding and keeping the right staff continues to challenge human services’ ability to provide quality care, this case study explores a critical component of staff satisfaction and performance. Are the Right People in the Right Seats? delves into the process of aligning employee skills and roles for organisational success.  

In this webinar, Tarati and Jenny presented He Ara Whiria (the woven path), a partnership model of co-governance that is in place at Te Toka Tumai (previously Auckland District Health Board). They discussed some of the challenges and opportunities that arise when weaving an indigenous worldview into the governance of a large public health service.

In this webinar, Dr Cathy Balding and her guest, Professor Peter Hibbert, discussed Peter's "ah-ha!" moment about making the case for quality.

Over the past three decades, many health systems have sought to enhance care delivery. Despite various approaches such as quality improvement and lean management these efforts can fall short. Failures are often attributed to leaders and workers not doing the right things. This article argues that the real quality problems lie in the underlying systems staff work with. It says that human service organisations will be more successful if they focus on designing systems that support the delivery of high-quality care, rather than trying to fix the people working within them.

This systematic review aims to evaluate the impact of accreditation on quality improvement in healthcare services and to understand the contextual factors influencing its implementation.

Spreading, scaling up, and sustaining improvements in human services is a complex challenge that many countries, including the UK, USA, and Australia, have been tackling. Despite significant efforts, the sustainability of scaling up local improvements remains low. One reason for this is the traditional, linear approach to spreading improvements, which often overlooks the complexity and evolving nature of healthcare systems.