The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) leads and
coordinates national improvements in safety and quality in health care. It has developed a
framework for safe and high quality care with three core principles – that care is consumer
centred, driven by information, and organised for safety (ACSQHC, 2010).
In addition to this framework, ACSQHC have developed National Safety and Quality Health
Service (NSQHS) Standards to ‘protect the public from harm and to improve the quality of
health service provision’ (ACSQHC, 2017, p. 5). The Registered Nurse is integral to every
standard that has been developed by the ACSQHC.
This assessment is designed to enable you to demonstrate an understanding of quality and
safety in health care through the critical discussion of one of the National Safety and Quality
Health Service Standards.

Write a 2,000-word assignment. Before you write your assignment,
you will need to:
• Choose one of the following National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS)
Standards (ACSQHC, 2017) as the topic of your assignment.
• Clinical governance (Standard 1)
• Partnering with consumers (Standard 2)
• Preventing and controlling healthcare-associated infection (Standard 3)
• Comprehensive care (Standard 5)
• Communicating for safety (Standard 6)
• Blood management (Standard 7)

• Identify the type of process and outcome data that could be collected, analysed and fed
back for improvements in care relevant to your chosen standard. (You may wish to refer
to the article by Donabedian, 1988, as a starting point). This area for action aligns with
step 2.2 of the Australian Safety and Quality Framework for Health Care (ACSQHC,
2010).
• Research the topic of quality and safety in health care in Australia then identify and
analyse scholarly literature that is relevant to your assignment topic, namelyyour:
• chosen standard,
• a clinical care activity relevant to this standard,
• process and outcome data required to monitor outcomes/improvements relevant to
the standard.