The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care defines clinical governance as "an integrated component of corporate governance of health service organisations. It ensures that everyone—from frontline clinicians to managers and members of governing bodies, such as boards—is accountable to patients and the community for assuring the delivery of health services that are safe, effective, high-quality and continuously improving". Clinical governance systems provide confidence to the community and the healthcare organisation that systems are in place to deliver safe and high-quality health care.2
Clinical governance concepts provide pharmacists, and organisations that provide pharmacy services, with guiding principles for the design, implementation and ongoing evaluation of pharmacy services. Pharmacists can use clinical governance principles to help plan new pharmacy services and improve the quality of patient care.7
Individual pharmacists and the health organisations they practise in are jointly responsible and accountable for the delivery of safe, effective and high-quality health care through good clinical governance.7,8
For more information, see Clinical Governance Principles for Pharmacy Services.