In this post, Jess Wilson, Hospital Director at Aberbeeg Hospital, discusses changes to Clinical Governance at Aberbeeg and what this means for her staff and service users.
Over the last five months we have all been grappling with a new structure to our clinical governance system.
When the new structure was first explained, initial thoughts were: Great, this is what clinical governance should be like. Listening to what is happening in the local clinical teams and then cascading up to the regional clinical governance meeting and then to the Elysium Healthcare board if needed.
However, change isn’t always easy. Understanding what this meant in real, practical terms took a few attempts. With support from other sites and the regional governance manager it became clear what was really being asked of us after a couple of false starts.
Fundamentally, the clinical governance process changed from being a passive process: sites receiving information from across Elysium Healthcare (corporate and non-clinical information) and dashboards (quantitative clinical information available for all to see any time) to an active process: a listening project. As Hospital Director, I listen more during the month to what people are telling me in supervision, in conversations, team meetings and reflective practice. I then ask: is this for the proforma? Where is the question in this situation? Can we find a solution together locally? And if so, would it be helpful for regional clinical governance to know about the conversation and our solution? If we haven’t found a solution to the question, can it be taken to the regional group for discussion and ideas?
We may not have a question every month that needs to be cascaded to the board, but we might have a question we can discuss and talk about at our local clinical governance which makes clinical governance feel like it belongs to us, giving it real meaning. The question, the discussion, and the outcome will be shared on the proforma to share with other sites so they can benefit from our learning if relevant to them.
This process is still being improved on, but the feedback is that it has made the clinical governance process feel more meaningful to the MDT at site.
Our next step: To embed the same system into the ward staff meetings to enable contributions from all staff to be heard in the clinical governance process.
– Jess Wilson, Hospital Director, Aberbeeg Hospital