Audit of audit: review of a clinical audit programme in a teaching hospital intensive care unit

Objective: A comprehensive review of the clinical audit programme in a teaching hospital intensive care unit. Design: A retrospective analysis of the clinical audit projects undertaken within the intensive care unit over the preceding 2 years and compared with published national guidelines for clinical audit. Setting: A 27-bedded teaching hospital intensive care unit in the UK. Measurements: Each audit project was reviewed independently by two assessors. The following questions were assessed: 1) Were the projects true audits? 2) Were they prospective or retrospective? 3) Did the projects have input from appropriate members of the multidisciplinary team? 4) How many of the audit projects were re-audits? 5) Of the re-audits how many showed evidence of service improvement? Each audit project was also scored against the Audit Project Assessment Tool produced by the UK Clinical Governance Support Team. Results: Of the twenty five audit projects reviewed twenty two were considered to be true audits. All of the ...