title: Audit of audit: review of a clinical audit programme in a teaching hospital intensive care unit.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A comprehensive review of the clinical audit programme in a teaching hospital intensive care unit.
  
  
  METHODS
  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.
  
  
  METHODS
  A 27-bedded teaching hospital intensive care unit in the UK.
  
  
  METHODS
  Each audit project was reviewed independently by two assessors. The following questions were assessed. 1. Were the projects true audits? 2. Were they prospective of 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 projects used only retrospective data. Audit projects were contributed from all sections of the multidisciplinary critical care team but there were few truly multidisciplinary projects. Four of the audit projects were re-audits, of these three showed service improvement and one showed deterioration. Of the twenty two true audit projects reviewed, eleven were classified as good quality projects using the Audit Project Assessment Tool.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite the clinical audit programme being active and well supported, objective evidence of clinical governance benefit was lacking. The overall clinical audit programme has been revitalised by a series of improvements since undertaking this review and this approach is recommended to other organizations who are interested in improving their clinical audit performance.
authors.affiliation: Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, UK. pganderson@doctors.org.uk
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fee
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shulman
authors.forename: Geoffrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bellingan
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Howell
mesh_terms: D003133:Commission on Professional and Hospital Activities / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000458:organization & administration*; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011446:Prospective Studies; D006113:United Kingdom