Critically Assessing Human Factors And The Impacts On...

Introduction â€Å"Risk reduction programmes supported by clinical audit always improve patient care outcomes† is an arguable statement. This report will expand and explore this judgment by critically analysing human factors and the impacts on health care, describing structured approaches to risk management, determining ethical and legal parameters of clinical risk management and analysing and debating the merits and shortfalls of clinical risk reduction strategies. Methods Multiple search engines were used to source credible information for this report, including the AUT Library, Medline and Google Scholar. These databases enabled access to a vast range of journals, articles, publications and e-books. Selections were based predominantly†¦show more content†¦The concept of clinical governance arose in the late 1990’s, following inexcusable incidents of medical malpractice. These incidents were key indicators to health professionals and the public that standards were not being up held and as result patients were being put in undue danger (Stonehouse, 2013). Although these incidents were dealt with accordingly, risks will always remain apparent, thus making clinical governance an issue to be embraced and fully employed by individuals and organisations. The chief components of clinical governance include; clinical risk, policies and procedures, patient information, clinical audit, clinical effectiveness, research and development, complaints , quality improvements, performance monitoring and training and development (Patel, 2010). These elements interlink and strive towards improving overall patient care. Every patient has a right to quality standardised care and it is therefore every member of staff’s responsibility to work towards ensuring continuous provision (Som, 2011). Clinical Audit Clinical auditing is one of the most essential components encompassed under the clinical governance umbrella. It is defined as a quality enhancement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systemic review critiqued against a specific criteria with allowance for implementation of change (Gillam Siriwardena, 2013). The most commonly utilised audit is the standard based audit. This