Risk refers to hazard, danger, the possibility of bad results, etc. However, the guide, which is published by the Project Management Institute and the Association for Project Management, refers to the broader perspective of risk, which states that any uncertainty or any unexpected event that when happens may have a positive or negative effect on the project goal. Another definition states that an uncertain event, when it occurs, will have a positive or negative impact on the accomplishment of the project’s objective (PMI & APM).
Risk management is the most critical and related phase of clinical governance. Clinical governance is the system that makes National Health services accountable for continuously improving the standards of clinical care. It is the job of the National Health Service to improve the quality of services. Different approaches are studied in the literature that highlight the need to perform a comprehensive analysis to find out the root cause of adverse events (2011 Elsevier). Recently, healthcare systems have been involved in numerous changes at different levels, ranging from technological advancements to behavioral ones, and they are working to increase efficiency. Moreover, the medical advancements in the last few years have contributed a lot to raising the organization complexity level at hospitals; this is caused by many factors such as a non-uniform management model, diverse professional experience, the complexity of the surgery, and constant growth in the number of users of healthcare services. As a result, complexity in the field of medicine is driven by invention and innovation in the science as well as technology departments; this emphasizes the need for new models of management (Bridges, 2006). Clinical governance aims to ensure that patients receive the best quality of healthcare services. The systems and processes are included in clinical governance to improve services constantly and for monitoring, clinical audit, clinical effectiveness program, risk management, management of staff, education, and training, and the use of information in order to deliver the best healthcare services (Sale, 2005). Previous studies have found that risk management in clinical governance does not always go according to predictions. Moreover, it is found that risk management does not rely on the understanding of the individuals working in the investigating procedures; it does not also give worthy support to decision-making. Clinical risk is defined as the probability that the patient may be affected by the medical treatment in a positive way or a negative, maybe voluntarily or involuntarily (Kohn et al., 1999). In clinical risk, medical errors are very significant since they may arise during different medical processes, from thorough preparation, therapy prescription, administration, and distribution (Vincent, 2001).
