ABSTRACT
Clinical governance has more of a management and quality base, being accountable to the government through the primary care trusts, where revalidation is a professional-based measure to ensure high standards of care. Each general practitioner has a responsibility to provide a high quality of care and to audit this. Patients need to be confident that their doctor is up to date and is offering effective treatment. Clinical governance is an effective tool for monitoring and improving quality of care in general practice. Audit definitions have evolved somewhat from Maurin's thoughts in 1976, in terms of it being a general counting exercise, to the modern-day government's definition in working for patients, which defines audit as ‘the systematic critical analysis of the quality of medical care, including procedures used for the diagnosis and treatment, the use of resources and the resulting outcome and quality of life for the patients’.
