Clinical Audit

Quality of care is of paramount importance to patients, the public and everyone at our Trust. Clinical audit enables teams to check that they are giving care in accordance with agreed standards and guidance, ensuring patients are treated in the right way, at the right time to meet agreed outcomes.

Where results of a clinical audit show care is not in line with agreed standards appropriate action is taken. This could include, for example, additional training, changes to service provision or to the way in which colleagues communicate with patients and carers. A further clinical audit is then conducted to establish whether the problem has been resolved.

All doctors, nurses, therapists and health care professionals undertake clinical audits.  A specialist clinical audit team ensures projects are carefully designed and well carried out.  Data for clinical audit is often drawn from health records.  It is kept securely and, in the vast majority of projects, is held anonymously.

The annual Quality account provides a short overview of the clinical audit activity undertaken in the previous year.  A section covers participation in national audits. Few of these currently include services provided within the community.

Our Clinical Audit policy will be available here shortly.