Clinical Practice Improvement
Good clinical practice improvement works at both the clinical and strategic level to improve the quality and safety of patient care. The fundamental tools of clinical practice improvement include the application of validated measurement tools to assess and benchmark current practice, engaging stakeholders in the evaluation and process improvement and developing systems to support sustainable progress towards achievable solutions to service delivery gaps.
Key features of effective Clinical Governance are ensuring that appropriate safety and quality systems are in place to achieve clinical practice improvement; and that there are systems in place to ensure organisational accountability for this.
Current initiatives for HNE Health are also priority issues identified by NSW Health and the Clinical Excellence Commission as associated with opportunities for minimisation of adverse events and for clinical practice improvement. These include:
- Blood Transfusion
- Clinical Communication
- Correct Patient, Correct Site, Correct Procedure
- Detecting the Deteriorating Patient (Between the Flags)
- Falls Injury prevention
- Infection Prevention and Control
- Pressure Ulcer Prevention
- Quality Use of Medicines
- Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) Prevention
Clinical practice improvement requires application of the key principles of quality improvement methodology in clinical practice. Methodologies include clinical practice review, clinical audit and morbidity and mortality review. NSW Health has published a number of guidelines to support clinicians to improve patient care through the translation of evidence into clinical practice and to measure the impact. These include the Easy Guide to Clinical Practice Improvement and The Clinician’s Toolkit. To access those listed below click on the hyperlink:
Further Information
For further information on any of the clinical practice improvement projects listed above please click on the link to go to the respective web page that will contain contact details for each.