Abstract:

Clinical governance is a well-established mechanism by which a health service is held accountable for the safety, quality and effectiveness of clinical care delivered to patients. There are numerous models and structures that attempt to describe the key elements of clinical governance, for example the ‘Temple’ model, which originated from the Mansfield District Trust of the NHS in 2002. This model modulates governance into blocks, being; system awareness, teamwork, communication, ownership and leadership. Education strategies are also aligned with the intended outcomes of governance in that they aim to hold the education program developer accountable for the information provided, for the strategy of engagement and for the overall outcomes of improving effectiveness, efficiencies and safety in patient care activities. Educational governance in health and more specifically nursing, however, is a relatively new concept stemming from the parent of clinical governance. The term educational governance itself, throughout the UK, Scandinavia and the USA, has been used to describe diverse activities and approaches from design of programs, funding, and managing education to benefit learners, organisations and the wider society. Disparity still exists amongst academic and grey literature in defining what educational governance means. A literature search was undertaken on the 24th June 2014. An initial search of MEDLINE, CINAHL and EMBASE. This was completed to establish what benchmarks, studies or work had been previously undertaken in the area of educational governance in order to guide and direct the development of frameworks and procedures the surgical nursing education team of the Central Adelaide Health Service.

The evidence posits that there is a causal relationship between governance applied to targeted and well-designed education and training programs and quality improvement and the resultant outcomes to patient care. The Scottish NHS, created a “NHS Education for Scotland educational governance framework” which has direct applicability to the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) surgical directorate. The NHS framework has influenced the creation of six Education Governance Operational Principles(EGOP) to direct the operational requirements for educational governance for the surgical directorate at the RAH. This presentation will extrapolate and discuss the operational details of the EGOP's listed below supporting educational governance of the surgical directorate of the Central Adelaide Health Service.

1. Risk management
2. Clinical governance principles
3. Organisational values and priorites
4. Standards, criteria and benchmarks
5. Quality management processes
6. Governance structures and reporting

Keywords:

Educational governance, quality improvement, practical applications, nurse education.