Patient safety and medicines
Measuring, testing and sustaining better, fairer care in Singapore practice, with audits that answer real questions and change what you do
Registered health professionals in Singapore: doctors, nurses and midwives, dentists and oral health therapists, pharmacists, optometrists and opticians, and allied health professionals, including those planning a personal audit, leading an improvement project or responding to a quality finding or complaint.
Structured learning and a written reflection to show insight after a complaint, an investigation or a board inquiry.
Focused learning on a core standard of practice, with a certificate and reflection for your portfolio.
This course teaches the practical methods of quality improvement and clinical audit as they apply in Singapore. You will learn to set improvement aims, use the Model for Improvement and Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, choose outcome, process and balancing measures, read run charts and control charts, and design a clinical audit with evidence-based criteria, sound sampling and lawful handling of patient data under the Personal Data Protection Act 2012. It places this work in the Singapore setting: licensing and clinical governance under the Healthcare Services Act 2020, the serious reportable events framework and quality assurance committees, national guidance such as the National Guidelines on High Alert Medications and ACE Clinical Guidances, and the research boundary set by the Human Biomedical Research Act 2015.
It is written for doctors, nurses and midwives, dentists and oral health therapists, pharmacists, optometrists and opticians, and allied health professionals in hospitals, polyclinics, community hospitals, nursing homes and private practice. It shows how to audit your own practice in a way that is proportionate and repeatable, how to record the work alongside your CME or CPE learning, and how to choose actions that redesign the system rather than relying on reminders.
Improvement in Singapore must also be fair. The course shows how to involve patients and family caregivers, how to stratify results by language, age, living situation and other factors so that averages do not hide gaps, and how to report findings respectfully. It ends with professional accountability: the limits of legal protection for quality information, why manipulating audit data is a serious probity concern, and how a complete audit cycle provides credible evidence of insight after a complaint or incident.
10 sections · 24 lessons · 3 hours (estimated) · 20-question final assessment
Final assessment
20scenario-based questions
Certificate of completion
A certificate of completion for your learning portfolio.
The course includes a structured reflective account template: guided prompts to record what you learned, how you will apply it and how the change will show in your practice. It gives you written evidence of insight after a concern, and a ready record for your CPD portfolio.
Write it in your own words and leave out anything that could identify a patient, a colleague or a case. If you have an open complaint or case, talk to your adviser before reflecting on it in writing.
Clinical audit asks how closely practice matches an agreed, evidence-based standard and is completed by action and re-audit. Quality improvement tests changes in small cycles linked to measurement. The course teaches both and shows when each is the right tool.
Yes. It explains the quality roles created by the Healthcare Services Act, including the principal officer and clinical governance officer, the serious reportable events framework, quality assurance committees, and national guidance you can use as audit standards.
The course applies the Personal Data Protection Act and the PDPC healthcare guidance to audit: collect only what you need, use codes instead of names and NRIC numbers, keep data within your organisation's systems, delete working files when done and report any lapse promptly to your data protection officer.
When it aims to create generalisable knowledge, departs from standard care, uses randomisation or control groups, or collects samples or new data beyond routine practice. Such projects may fall under the Human Biomedical Research Act, so the course advises asking your IRB or research office before starting.
That depends on your board's current rules for the activity, so check before relying on it. The course shows how to design a proportionate personal audit and record it with your learning records, which is worthwhile whether or not it earns points.
Usually not. The Healthcare Services Act gives specific protections to the work of quality assurance committees, but an ordinary ward, clinic or personal audit is not protected simply because its purpose is quality. The course explains how to write audit reports with that in mind.
No course can promise that. Any requirement set by a board, committee, tribunal or employer is theirs to define and accept, so check with them or your lawyer first. The course does show how a complete audit cycle provides credible evidence of insight and change.
Every legal and regulatory point comes from primary sources: the Acts that set up each professional board, the boards' own codes and guidance, and the Ministry of Health. Anything we cannot confirm is left out.
Lessons, scenarios and assessment questions are written by us for each edition separately, then checked for accuracy, teaching quality and fair assessment before publication.
When a code, standard or law changes, the affected courses are reviewed and updated. Reported errors in legal or regulatory facts are corrected first.
Root cause analysis and systems review of harm in Singapore: SRE licence conditions, QACs, interviews, contributory factors, strong actions and just culture.
Find, rate and control clinical risk in Singapore: the HCSA framework, MOH serious reportable events, human factors, the hierarchy of controls, WSH duties and learning that lasts.
Reflect with purpose: Gibbs, Driscoll, Johns and Brookfield, CME and CPE requirements across the Boards, statements after a concern and the legal limits on reflective notes.
