Clinical governance is the system through which organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services. It also safeguards high standards of care by creating an environment in which clinical excellence will flourish.
CSP's Quality Assurance Standards
The CSP has developed Quality Assurance Standards (QA standards) to support members to promote and assure quality in clinical practice and ensure the delivery of high-quality physiotherapy services. The QA standards provide statements of expected levels for service delivery. They are set at a level which is reasonable and achievable by a CSP member, or physiotherapy service in the UK.
The QA standards can be used as a framework for quality assurance in your service. They provide one method of identifying actions that will improve services. They also support members to comply with the legal, moral and ethical obligations placed on them when practising physiotherapy in the UK.
Using the QA audit tool will provide evidence that physiotherapy service delivery is of a standard quality. It will also provide useful information as part of a cyclical quality-assurance process.
Other useful documents for clinical practice
There are many other CSP documents that facilitate the delivery of a high quality, evidence-based physiotherapy practice. These include:
- an explanation, definition and overview of evidence-based practice and its importance to the profession
- a range of professional guidance papers which will ensure your policies and procedures are of the required standard
- clinical briefings which give an overview on the latest evidence in specific areas of physiotherapy
- key evidence from the NIHR for musculoskeletal physiotherapy in Moving Forward
- information on national evidence-based guidance such as NICE and SIGN
- CSP standards for hip fracture rehabilitation