Erro médico: Estratégias de governação clínica

Abstract

Clinical governance has been introduced, in the new model of health care organization in Portugal, as a process of quality improvement. This article describes the definition of this new term in the language of healthcare through its different components, examines how the concept of accountability, central to clinical governance, enlarges the notion of professional and legal responsibility and how the introduction of this new strategy of governance gives raise to new tensions, inside primary healthcare system. In spite of all benefits with this new strategy, the run for a blind accountability may also bring more fragmentation of primary health care. Therefore, this article is also a plea, now more than ever, to respect the main principles and values that are central to the identity of Family Medicine as discipline and speciality.