Clinical Governance and Audit

Clinical governance is the framework through which an organisation is accountable for the quality of its care and for continuously improving it.

NHS organisations usually have governance structures, though each clinician must work within them and raise deficiencies; Good medical practice expects you to use them and to take part in regular reviews and audits of your work. In a sports team the structures often do not exist, and the practitioner may have to build them.

Elite sport concentrates the pressures governance exists to resist: divided loyalty, informal record keeping, decisions under commercial and selection pressure, and care delivered in hotels, gyms and aircraft rather than registered premises.