Clinical Audit, The Process Of Inspection Of Data

Running head: CLINICAL AUDIT
Clinical audit
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Author’s note

1CLINICAL AUDIT
Section 1
1. Audit is defined as the systematic process of inspection of data, statements, records and
performance of an organization to assess the accuracy of the organizational work process.
In the field of health care, audit is defined as the systematic analysis of performance of
individual staffs and team by collection data on clinical activities and their outcomes. The
ultimate goal of such audit in health care setting is to improve the quality of care and
enhance the likelihood of better patient ca . Thus, it can be said that clinical audit is a
valuable tool to improve the quality of care. It is one of the components of continuous
quality improvement process and all clinical outcomes are assessed against well-defined
standards. It is useful in identifying discrepancies in practice (Esposito and Dal Canton
2014).
Apart from improved patient outcome, clinical audit is also important to advance
professional development. It brings forwards the opportunities of extending clinical training
to staffs and making them aware about current standards of practice. In addition to this,
clinical audit is vital in health care organization as it is one of the cornerstones for clinical
governance. A good clinical audit process allows hospitals to conduct peer reviews, analyse
performance indicators and outcomes, plans areas of improvement and lower the cost
associated with patient care (Furia et al. 2014).
2. Some of the key components of the clinical audit cycle include preparing for the audit,
selecting appropriate indicators or standards, observing practice or data collection,
comparison of data with standards, implement and maintaining improvement related

2CLINICAL AUDIT
changes. These five step approach to clinical audit is a common approach used in most
organization to achieve the purpose of audit process (Esposito and Dal Canton 2014).
Section 2
3.
Audit question and rationale: In any polyclinic, health care staffs come in close contact with
patient and they are exposed to infected bloods or fluids during patient contact or while giving
injections to patient. Health care workers also acquire bacteria on their hand by touching
contaminated surfaces within the patient environment. Thus, this form of person-to-person
contact increases the risk of hospital acquired infection (HCAI), which is a major burden in
health care setting. In such environment, hand washing is the most important strategy to prevent
the transmission of bacteria from person to another (Monegro and Regunath 2018). They need to
engage in hand washing at various important moments during patient contact. However, how far
all health care workers engage in hand washing at all critical moments are not known. Therefore,
to get idea about compliance with hand washing standards and identifying improvement areas,
the clinical audit question that can be posed is :
How many health care workers adhere with hand washing practices at critical moments
during patient contact at the poly clinic?
This question is important to control risk of HCAI and ensure adherence to standard process of
hand hygiene as laid down by WHO.
Criteria: To conduct an audit on compliance to hand hygiene, the criteria that was selected was
adherence to hand hygiene or hand washing. This criterion has been taken because level of