What is ‘Systems Thinking’, and how is it relevant to clinical governance?
In any ‘system’ – essentially, a collective of different moving parts – we must understand how the parts affect the whole. There are many ways to define ‘Systems Thinking’ – a concept that was first coined by Barry Richmond:
“As interdependency increases, we must learn in a new way. It’s not good enough simply to get smarter and smarter about our particular “piece of the rock.” We must have a common language and framework for sharing our specialized knowledge, expertise and experience with “local experts” from other parts of the web… In short, interdependency demands Systems Thinking. Without it, the evolutionary trajectory that we’ve been following since we emerged from the primordial soup will become increasingly less viable.”