Resources

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.

Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce, led by Professor Mark Cormack, looked at the available evidence about health professionals’ ability to deliver on their full scope of practice in primary care. The review identified opportunities to remove the barriers stopping health professionals from working to their full scope of practice. It also drew on examples of multi-disciplinary teams where members are working to their full scope of practice to deliver best-practice primary care. Here, Mark presented some barriers and opportunities for health professionals to work at their full scope of practice.

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.

Designed for leaders and teams across the sector, this webinar examined how cultural change can be achieved by embedding clinical governance principles into daily practice. Our panelists discussed the importance of fostering a shared language and building staff capabilities through targeted training, and spoke on how leadership at every level can drive process improvements to establish robust, supportive systems.  

Building a clinical governance framework is challenging, especially for health services that are used or provided across more than one state or territory. This webinar discussed some key components for building a practical clinical governance framework to enhance uptake amongst users of the system. 

Hear from Cathy Balding and her guest, Sarah Soltan, as they explored the boundaries of clinical decision-making within clinical governance, ensuring patient safety and quality care remain the top priority.

The importance of a safety culture, incorporating psychological safety and encouraging people to speak up, has been identified as critical to safe care for some time. However, achieving and maintaining such an environment can be challenging. This metasynthesis examines 15 studies to “review and synthesise qualitative research on nurses' experiences of speaking up”. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has developed a Sector Readiness Plan to assist the aged care sector in preparing for the upcoming Aged Care Act.