Babylon and Clinical Governance

The majority of people understand Babylon only because of the biblical connection with the great King of the city and empire, Nebuchadnezzar. It is however the place were laws were first made to control the treatment of the sick and wounded.

Clinical Governance has been the buzz word within the health service for over a decade, but did you know that a form of clinical governance was in use around 3,900 years ago.

I mentioned on the previous page the ancient Sumerian Nomadic Semite tribes and how they produced several hundred clay tablets.

These tablets told how they developed a managed health care system, although this system is primitive by our modern standards. The tablets were written using cuneiform, one of the first forms of hieroglyphic writing, these concepts were inscribed on clay tablets and chiselled onto stone stele between the 17th and 21st centuries B.C.

Clinical governance is about ensuring that patients are safe and risks are managed.(30)

Clinical governance is the framework through which all the components of quality, including patient and public involvement, are brought together and placed high on the agenda of each organisation.31

On the next page I have outlined some of the laws that were put in place to protect people from malpractice.

Quote 7

"And Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon carried out from there all the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king's house, and he cut in pieces all the articles of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD, as the LORD had said. Also he carried into captivity all Jerusalem: all the captains and all the mighty men of valour, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land."32