We’re currently reviewing our programme of clinical audit, as part of our Quality Improvement Programme. Our aims have been to:
Stop doing any audits that aren’t adding value to our efforts to improve quality of care
Find smarter ways of doing audits that we report to external organisations so that we don’t need to ask frontline teams to collect data that we could obtain from electronic systems
Focus our audit work on improving the reliability of key safety critical processes
We want to make audit locally relevant and meaningful, measure a smaller number of processes but more frequently, and focus on testing ideas to make improvements.
How are we doing this?
Each directorate has been asked to identify a small number of safety critical processes, which will be the initial focus on their audit work in 2014. We are piloting this approach in adult mental health services from March to June 2014. Teams are auditing these processes, using the data to identify opportunities for improvement, and using the PDSA cycle (Plan-Do-Study-Act) to test change ideas. This pilot will then inform how we implement the approach Trust-wide.
