title: Achieving quality assurance through clinical audit.
abstract: Audit is a crucial component of improvements to the quality of patient care. Clinical audits are undertaken to help ensure that patients can be given safe, reliable and dignified care, and to encourage them to self-direct their recovery. Such audits are undertaken also to help reduce lengths of patient stay in hospital, readmission rates and delays in discharge. This article describes the stages of clinical audit and the support required to achieve organisational core values.
authors.affiliation: Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, London. seraphimpatel@nhs.net
authors.forename: Seraphim
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000592:standards; D004509:Education, Nursing, Continuing / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D009731:Nursing Audit / Q000592:standards*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012449:Safety; D012947:Social Work / Q000592:standards; D006113:United Kingdom