Clinical audit is a key tool to measure and monitor quality improvement in the services which we offer our patients, through the use of both National and local clinical audits.
Clinical audit is used to monitor what we are currently doing clinically and measure it against evidence-based standards or ‘best practice’ measures, producing reports on how well we are doing against the best possible practice.
Local clinical audits
Local audits are to measure our own provision of services and to measure our effectiveness against ‘best practice’ which can be national guidelines, such as those issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) or our own clinical policies.
National clinical audits
National clinical audits allow us to compare our practice with similar community trusts across England. Due to the size of the national audit projects, data is collected from each of organisations and reported on retrospectively (data is provided about the year before).
Training
Our clinical audit and effectiveness facilitator can provide training to clinical staff participating in clinical audit.
A monthly newsletter is circulated to health professionals detailing any new or developmental work completed.
Our clinical audit and effectiveness facilitator is part of the East of England Clinical Audit Network, which meets regularly and discusses both local and national clinical audit related topics.
