Clinical Networks

Clinical Networks provide a focus on service areas to support improvement across complex pathways of care.A network can be a powerful way of sharing learning and ideas, building a sense of community and purpose, shaping new solutions to entrenched problems, tapping into hidden talent and knowledge, and providing space to innovate and embed change.They work best best when professionals and citizens work together as equal partners to find solutions and make change happen.

How to access, navigate, coordinate and integrate care is a problem for patients, carers, staff, volunteers and students. Clinical networks provide cohesion within a particular discipline, developing ways to solve issues and promulgate good practice. They also provide a nexus to interact with other networks, so that their own discipline can be coordinated and integrated with other disciplines. If they are the glue then the regional clinical senates where they interact are the superglue

Particularly in areas which are under-resourced but have a major impact on health, public health and which account for a lot of avoidable disability - start with musculoskeletal disorders!