Clinical Audit

Question 1

What is Clinical Audit?

Answer 1

Clinical audit is a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the review of change (NICE 2002)

Question 2

What are the component parts of Clinical Audit ?

Answer 2

a. setting standards
b. measuring current practice
c. comparing results with standards (criteria)
d. changing practice
e. re-auditing to make sure practice has improved

Question 3

What is Audit cycle?

Answer 3

Question 4

How do you carry out a clinical audit?

Answer 4

1. Choose a topic ( Agreed problem, good evidence, measurable, amenable to change)
2. Defines your aim (Why and what am i hoping to achieve) and objectives ( What will i improve and assess)
3. Set my standards ( where i will get my standards - national guidelines, other teams, establish baseline standard ) , state my criteria and desired level of performance or target after established standard.
4. Collect my data ( Design data collection tool , study design ( retrospective or prospective)
5. Sources of Data ( Clinical records, disease or activity data sets, survey/questionnaire, interview
6. Analyze my data (
7. Interpret my data ( what does it mean, how does it compare with my target, look carefully at those that didn’t meet the target
8. What changes need to be made ? ( who need to be involved, how am i going to implement the changes)

9.Make the changes ( Set new targets)

10. Reaudit ( to check standards)

Question 5

Differences between Audit and Research

Answer 5