Audit and quality improvement

Quality healthcare is defined by the Institute of Medicine as care that is “safe, effective, efficient, equitable, timely and patient centred”. Clinical Audit is a means to find out that if the healthcare provided is in line with agreed and proven standards, helping professionals and patients identify how their service is performing, and where improvement could be made. Quality Improvement completes the audit cycle and can be described as the “combined and unceasing efforts of everyone - to make changes that will lead to better patient outcome (health), better system performance (care) and better professional development (learning)”.