The responsibility given to doctors to coordinate audit, research, education, use of guidelines and risk management to develop a strategy to raise the quality of medical care.
A concept, introduced in a UK government White Paper in 1997, aimed at ‘ensuring that all NHS organizations have in place proper processes for continuously monitoring and improving clinical audit’. All clinicians and managers are now expected to understand their individual and collective responsibilities for assuring accountability for the quality of patient care. Clinical governance is now included in the NHS legislation based on the 1997 White Paper.