Evidence-based management in clinical governance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe a strategy – a partnership between a clinician manager and nurse academic – developed for the purpose of utilizing clinical governance literature to enhance management practice. The partnership is an initiative that has been implemented to fill a growing need for more collaboration between the tertiary health education and health industry sectors. The paper provides a brief overview of clinical governance and evidence-based management, and describes the partnership between the clinician manager and nurse academic. For the purposes of this paper ‘clinician manager’ refers to a health professional who also has an extensive management role in a health care organization. The benefits of this partnership in terms of the application of clinical governance literature to improved management decision making and practice concern the ability of clinician managers to have access to the most up-to-date research findings in terms of good clinical governance, and to be able to apply them in their management practice. Information about clinical governance, linked with evidence-based management and the application of clinical governance literature in the management of a health service is also provided. The authors argue that this is a useful initiative which could be adopted by health care managers and academics – with the aim of enhancing evidence-based management policy and decision making.