Clinical Governance: Where you come in

Posted on: February 22, 2023

Feedback from the recent Employee Engagement Survey highlighted frontline employees' desire to be involved in decisions that impact their work. The new Clinical Governance model, parts of which will begin functioning before this summer, offers new opportunities to do just that.

Diverse perspectives are essential to ensuring the new governance model operates as intended, and interdisciplinary representation on committees is key to ensuring the right expertise is involved in the right decision-making. 

Next week, we will be inviting staff and medical staff to get involved by providing feedback on the draft Terms of Reference (ToR) for some of the first committees that will be set up. These ToRs will include the criteria for committee member selection. We will also be hosting drop-in information sessions over the month of March to explain further how the new model will work.  Watch the Weekly for a link to Terms-of-References, committee selection criteria and feedback mechanisms. 

A single, inclusive, supported and streamlined decision-making structure will help staff and medical staff collaborate to effectively plan and deliver services, advance ideas, and ensure quality care. Making the system work better for point-of-care teams will improve communication, create better work flows and make it easier to provide the high-quality care that providers want to deliver.  This in turn will improve patient experience and quality of care, which ultimately leads to improved health outcomes for people. The project team looks forward to working with you.

ABOUT THE CLINICAL GOVERNANCE IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVE: Island Health's Clinical Governance Improvement Initiative (CGII) is one of our top priorities. In practice, Clinical governance includes all of the processes that enable shared decision-making across disciplines and departments to design patient-centred care. This includes things like clinical policy and standards, clinical innovation, performance monitoring, quality improvement priorities and clinical service plans.

The goal of the CGII is to ensure teams have what they need to plan and deliver safe, high-quality care for patients, residents and families, regardless of their location or circumstances. To do that, staff, medical staff and leaders need transparent decision-making across our organization, as well as good clinical policy, consistent service plans, logical escalation pathways and access to expertise in areas ranging from specific population needs to data analysis, among many others.

Visit the Clinical Governance Improvement Initiative Intranet site and read our FAQs to gain a deeper understanding of this work and how the recommendations were developed.