Designing accessible and usable clinical policies to enhance patient safety

Clinical policies in healthcare, such as guidelines, protocols, procedures and care pathways, are essential to guide decision-making and standardise practice. Investigations into patient safety incidents have often found that clinical policies had not been followed by staff, attributing this to inadequately designed and inaccessible policies that are detached from the realities of clinical practice. In this article, the author discusses clinical policy design and patient safety, explores the effects of inadequately designed policies on patients, staff and organisations, and considers some of the reasons why policies may fail to support patient safety. The author also outlines ways of addressing inadequate clinical policy design and provides some principles and recommendations for ensuring that clinical policies are accessible and usable.