Clinical Audit Process

We know that clinical audit is a process which seeks to identify areas requiring improvement and development. Prior to the preparation of audit it is necessary that there is a valid reason for the undertaking of the audit.

Why should I do an audit?

Clinical audit is a tool for generating evidence required for individuals and teams of professionals to demonstrate that their practice and procedures meet standards.

What should I audit?

When considering topics to audit it may be helpful to consider the following:

• High risk practice
• Patients' concerns
• Cost effectiveness
• Trust/Board/Agency Priorities
• Local concern
• Commissioning
• National guidelines
• New treatments or procedures

Whilst thinking about your topic, you should consider if your idea is realistic.

How do I set aims and objectives?

The aim describes what you want to achieve. It should measure the gap between ideal practice (determined from evidence, guidelines and standards) and actual practice.

The objectives describe what you are going to measure to show that your aim has been met. They should clearly state what your audit will investigate and how you will measure and make judgements . They should relate to your standards.

To ensure that your audit stays focused you need to state your aims and objectives.

How do I identify audit standards?

You must identify appropriate standards to compare practice against. Where possible you should used published national, regional or local standards.

If published standards do not exist you may need to develop your objectives and set a realistic standard to measure them against. To do this you should use research evidence, past audits and consensus opinion.

Completing the audit cycle – reaudit

The audit cycle is now almost complete, but without reaudit it is impossible to judge if actions have been implemented. Reauditing a topic after changes have been made is an essential step in the audit cycle.

Clinical audit has five key stages following a systematic process for the establishment of best practice. From this action plans can be drawn up leading to improved patient care and the monitoring of improvements, with each process aspiring to be of a higher quality than before.