Risk management

Good practice means the practitioner: (a) practises cultural safety (sections 2 and 3); (b) understands clinical governance and their obligations under it where relevant; (c) takes part in available quality assurance and improvement systems; (d) develops and uses risk management processes that identify and reduce risk of harm and respond to adverse events, where the setting lacks local systems; (e) takes part in monitoring and surveillance of adverse events and near misses and reports them to the proper authority where required; (f) makes sure systems exist for raising concerns about patient risk, if they hold clinical leadership or management responsibility; (g) works to reduce error and improve safety within available systems; (h) supports colleagues who raise safety concerns; and (i) takes all reasonable steps to address a possible compromise of patient safety.

• Clinical governance framework or practice risk register with owners and review dates
• Near-miss and incident reports with trend review
• Quality improvement activity records (clinical audits, peer review)
• Staff concern-raising procedure where the practitioner leads a service

• Sole practice with no risk or incident system at all
• Near misses not reported
• Leaders with no route for staff to raise safety concerns