Clinical Governance: Complexities and Promises

This chapter considers the scope of clinical governance by tracing its origins to the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, and by outlining its heterogeneous impacts on health sector employment relations in Australia. The concept of clinical governance originated in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1997 in The New NHS report, which describes it as an instrument that aims ‘to assure and improve clinical standards at the local level’ (Gray, 2004; UK Department of Health, 1997). Its formal definition is often derived from a later article:

… a framework through which NHS organizations are accountable for continually improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish (Donaldson and Gray, 1998, p. S38)