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Audit is a vital component of good clinical governance. It allows us to measure and compare our current practices against a set standard. This standard should be evidence based from research.
By carrying out clinical audit we can identify whether our current practices are as good as they could be. If they are not we can look for ways to improve our current practices so they are at the expected standard.
The first aspect of conducting a clinical audit is to consider what it is that you want to examine and then consider how you will collect the data.
There are two types of data that you can collect:
Prospective data - prospective collection of data may take longer but ensures that information that is required is not missed.
Retrospective data - this is data that you can collect from past information. The advantage of this is that it reduces bias implemented by participants being aware of the audit and their participation in it.
Once the audit is complete you need to compare it against the set standard and look for any discrepancy between this and the current standard based on the data you have collected. If there is a discrepancy it is critical to analyse why this is the case and to implement a strategy to raise standards to that of the set or gold standard.
Following this audit cycle it is prudent to complete a re-audit following an appropriate amount of time. This will allow you to see if the procedures implemented help raise practices to that of the set standard are effective.
Below you can see the audit cycle as described above:
Audit Cycle
Research vs Audit
Smith stated in his 1997 paper:
(Smith R. Audit and research. BMJ. 1992;305(6859):905‐906. doi:10.1136/bmj.305.6859.905)
“Research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do; audit with ensuring the right thing is done.”
In other words research aims to address a hypothesis to generate new evidence. This evidence is then used to create the set standard that the audit is measured against. The research looks to develop the standard and the audit aims to find out whether this is being met in practice.
Find out more in the video below: