Clinical Governance vs Risk Management in Healthcare: Key Differences and Importance
Clinical Governance vs Risk Management in Healthcare: Key Differences and Importance
Patient safety and quality of care are top priorities in the NHS, where even minor mistakes can have serious consequences. Understanding the difference between clinical governance and risk management is essential for checking high standards of patient care while minimising risks.
The framework of clinical governance promotes continuous quality improvement in healthcare, ensuring safe and effective patient care. Within this structure, risk management in healthcare plays a critical role in identifying, assessing, and reducing patient safety risks. Together, these components strengthen healthcare service delivery, improve clinical outcomes, and support a culture of safety.
The 7 Pillars of Clinical Governance
To fully understand, it’s important to recognise the seven pillars of clinical governance in the NHS that form its foundation. These are essential elements that work together to support patient safety and quality healthcare.
- Clinical Effectiveness – Ensuring healthcare interventions are evidence based and result in positive outcomes.
- Clinical Audit – Regular review of clinical practices and outcomes to ensure standards are maintained.
- Risk Management – Identifying, assessing, and managing risks to patient care and safety.
- Patient and Public Involvement – Involving patients and the public in decision-making and care processes.
- Staff Management – Ensuring that healthcare professionals are well-trained, supported, and accountable.
- Education and Training – Providing continuous learning and development opportunities for staff.
- Information Management – Properly managing patient data and ensuring it is accurate, secure, and accessible.
While the clinical governance definition provides a broad framework for maintaining and improving healthcare standards, risk management in healthcare specifically addresses the identification and decrease of potential hazards that could negatively affect the patient safety strategy.
Risk Management in Healthcare
Risk management in the healthcare industry is crucial to safeguarding patients, staff, and organisations. It involves a systematic approach to identifying and minimising risks, thus improving the overall quality of care.
Healthcare risk management follows three key steps:
Hazard Identification – Recognising potential dangers that could harm patients or staff. Hazards can range from environmental risks, such as slippery floors or poor waste disposal. It could also be clinical risks, like confusing drug packaging or inadequate infection control practices.
Risk Assessment – Once hazards are identified, their likelihood and potential severity are assessed. For instance, poor hand hygiene increases the risk of infections, and elderly patients may be at higher risk for falls.
Incident Reporting – Establishing a culture where incidents, near misses, and adverse events are reported. Incident reporting plays a vital role in learning from mistakes and continuously improving the safety of healthcare systems. A no-blame culture encourages reporting and enables healthcare professionals to identify trends and take preventative measures.
A risk and control matrix can help healthcare organisations prioritise risks based on severity and urgency, ensuring that the most critical issues are addressed first.
How Does Risk Management Fit into Clinical Governance?
While clinical governance and risk management in healthcare are closely related, they serve different purposes. Clinical governance is a broader framework aimed at ensuring high-quality care, patient safety, and quality improvement. It covers various aspects such as patient safety strategy, clinical effectiveness, staff management, and more.
On the other hand, risk management is a key component of clinical governance that focuses specifically on preventing harm by identifying, assessing, and managing risks. While clinical governance offers an overall structure for improving healthcare, risk management addresses the detailed, specific risks that could negatively impact patient care and outcomes.
Risk management supports clinical governance by reducing risks to patient safety and ensuring that healthcare systems have appropriate measures in place to prevent harm. It is a vital part of the overarching strategy to improve healthcare quality. However, clinical governance covers broader topics beyond just risk management, including patient involvement, staff training, and clinical audits, all of which contribute to improving care standards.
The Role of Clinical Governance and Risk Management in Ensuring Patient Safety
While clinical governance and risk management are similar, they are distinct concepts. Clinical governance serves as the broader framework that aims to ensure quality care and patient safety across the healthcare system, while risk management focuses on identifying, assessing, and eliminating risks that can harm patients. Together they provide a robust structure for continuously improving patient outcomes and ensuring safer healthcare environments.
For healthcare organisations, especially within the NHS, focusing on both clinical governance and risk management is essential to creating a culture of safety and ensuring that patients receive the best care possible. By understanding and applying the seven pillars of clinical governance, healthcare systems can drive improvement, reduce risks, and enhance patient care.
Want to deepen your understanding of clinical governance? Explore our Clinical Governance in Healthcare Programme and develop the skills to enhance patient safety and care quality!
