Duty Of Care

466 Words2 Pages

Dear Editor On 14th October 2015 your newspaper published an article about “Hiqa finds 66 instances of high risk issues at a Dublin centre concerning disabled people” (Irish times, 2015). I want to bring it to your kind attention that I realised that we all have a duty of care to highlight the wrongs that are going on in our culture. The culture of an organisation is the result of many issues. Poor leadership makes it easy for people to ignore the main concerns, resulting in poor quality and unacceptable behaviour (Bassett and Westmore, 2012). After reading your article it is evident to see that clinical governance is not addressed. According to the (HSE, 2012) clinical governance is a framework whereby healthcare teams are accountable for the safety and quality of patients. To maintain good clinical governance, there are 10 guiding principles to assist health services providers. These principles include patient first, safety, leadership, clear accountability, personal responsibility, inter-disciplinary working, supporting performance, open cultural, continuous quality improvement and defined authority. It is clear to see after reading your article, that this is not the case. Hiqa …show more content…

To bridge the gaps, leadership is essential whereby the leaders need to be engaged fully in the strategic process. Appropriate feedback channels are needed in order to allow staff to communicate concerns (Bassett and Westmore, 2012). Hiqa reported also that there was no follow up to deal with the high number of incidents taking place. I was surprised that this happened; it is outrageous that the 22 residents in the centre had to endure such a low standard of care regarding their overall health and safety. In essence, the emphasis on quality is not going to go away, good governance practice is vital for any