MD7104 2018-19
Assessment #2 – AUDIT PROPOSAL
Back ground
“Clinical audit is a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria…Where indicated, changes are implemented…and further monitoring is used to confirm improvement in healthcare delivery.” Principles for Best Practice in Clinical Audit (2002, NICE/CHI) Clinical audit – audit against agreed standards of best practice.
The key messages being that:
1. Clinical audit is not just a data collection exercise:
• It involves measuring current patient care and outcomes against explicit audit criteria (also termed standards).
• There is an expectation from the outset that practice will be improved.
2. Further clinical audit may be required to confirm that practice has improved.
CLINICAL AUDIT & RESEARCH: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? “Research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do; audit with ensuring that it is done right” Smith R. Audit & Research. BMJ 1992; 305: 905-6
http://www.uhbristol.nhs.uk/files/nhs-ubht/1%20What%20is%20Clinical%20Audit%20v3.pdf
What is required for this assignment?
Thinking about the clinical areas where you have worked as part of your practice placements, you need to write an audit proposal that relates to the assessment of any group of patients with a specific condition or undergoing any medical procedure. For example, patients with asthma, hyperglycaemia, patients undergoing endoscopy, etc.
In this proposal you should simply select the explicit criteria that related to the assessment of a specific condition or medical procedure and compare these criteria to the recommended standards of best practice to check if your team met the required standard or not.
How to structure your proposal:
Because it is a proposal it should be written in the future tense.
Title: Give your audit a precise title that describes what is being audited
Abstract (not more than 250 Words):
Background: a brief back ground about this specific assessment method, the aim of your clinical audit method should briefly describe your audit criteria and standard for each criterion. Who and how the data will be collected, how data will be analysed, and the recommended action in case your data is not meeting the standard of best practice?
1- Introduction: background about the selected assessment method, rational for the audit, aim and objectives, supported by relevant evidence from literature
2- Proposed method should include
• Patients characteristics and team involved. Inclusion and exceptions
• Participants (team involved in data collection)
• How you will invite your team to participate in this clinical audit
• Data collected:
• What are the audit criteria and what is the standard for each criterion with appropriate reference (i.e. clear definition of each criterion and each standard; how each criterion will be checked and expressed; and how many times data will be collected, and who will collect the data).
• The number of patient records that you need to collect the data from.
• Will it be mono or multi-centre audit?
• How data will be analysed, or how you will compare between the criteria and the recommended standard. N: B Standard are generally coming from Nice Guidelines, or any other high evidence-based papers.
3- Discussion
• Why this specific audit is important?
• What could be the potential reasons or the problems in practice that might lead to poor practice.
• What kind of changes in practice that you and your team might consider in case your proposed audit criteria is not meeting the standard? Your suggestion should be supported by evidence from literature?
Word count 2800 (70% of the module assessment), APA references.
Only references’ list is excluded from the words count
