Clinical audit is at the heart of clinical governance. Provides the mechanisms for reviewing the quality of everyday care provided to patients with common conditions like asthma or diabetes. Builds on a long history of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals reviewing case notes and seeking ways to serve their patients better. Addresses the quality issues systematically and explicitly, providing reliable information. Can confirm the quality of clinical services and highlight the need for improvement. Provides clear statements of principle about clinical audit in the NHS.

This book is essential reading for all those who undertake clinical audit or are training to do so, including health practitioners, managers and commissioners in the NHS. It will also be useful to patients who contribute to audit governance.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

With the NHS committed to making quality the centre of treatment, clinical audit - a proven and effective process for measuring quality and driving its improvement - has never been a more topical issue. Now thoroughly updated and rewritten, this new edition describes the process by which health professionals, managers and other NHS staff can assess the standard of care they deliver and how closely it corresponds with recommended best practice. It sets out the key principles of clinical audit practice, detailing advances in recent years such as simplified and accelerated audit, improved patient involvement, attention to ethics and methodology and the embedding of clinical audit in organisational governance as well as clinical practice. This book is essential reading for all those who undertake clinical audit or are training to do so, including health practitioners, managers and commissioners in the NHS. It will also be useful to patients who contribute to audit governance. Reviews from the first edition: This book should be available in all trusts and recommended to those of both junior and senior status who are about to invest time and energy in an audit project.' MEDICAL PROTECTION SOCIETY [W]ell-structured with summaries set out as key points throughout. The appendices give invaluable information on numerous websites for clinical guidelines, on clinical audit and clinical governance.' PHYSIOTHERAPY JOURNAL

By reading and assimilating the information in this handbook professionals, involved in clinical audits and practice development, will be able to design, plan and implement an audit project for patient care in line with up-to-date evidence.

This public inquiry report into serious failings in healthcare that took place at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust builds on the first independent report published in February 2010 (ISBN 9780102964394). It further examines the suffering of patients caused by failures by the Trust: there was a failure to listen to its patients and staff or ensure correction of deficiencies. There was also a failure to tackle the insidious negative culture involving poor standards and a disengagement from managerial and leadership responsibilities. These failures are in part a consequence of allowing a focus on reaching national access targets, achieving financial balance and seeking foundation trust status at the cost of delivering acceptable care standards. Further, the checks and balances that operate within the NHS system should have prevented the serious systemic failure that developed at Mid Staffs. The system failed in its primary duty to protect patients and maintain confidence in the healthcare system. This report identifies numerous warning signs that could and should have alerted the system to problems developing at the Trust. It also sets out 290 recommendations grouped around: (i) putting the patient first; (ii) developing a set of fundamental standards, easily understood and accepted by patients; (iii) providing professionally endorsed and evidence-based means of compliance of standards that are understood and adopted by staff; (iv) ensuring openness, transparency and candour throughout system; (v) policing of these standards by the healthcare regulator; (vi) making all those who provide care for patients , properly accountable; (vii) enhancing recruitment, education, training and support of all key contributors to the provision of healthcare; (viii) developing and sharing ever improving means of measuring and understanding the performance of individual professionals, teams, units and provider organisations for the patients, the public, and other stakeholders.

A must-have guide for any professional in the drug manufacturing industry The Good Clinical Practice (GCP) audit is a tedious but necessary exercise that assures that all parties do their job properly and in compliance with the applicable FDA code. Clinical Trials Audit Preparation demystifies the audit process for all parties involved, including clinical research sponsors, clinical investigators, and institutional review boards. This book provides a step-by-step explanation of the FDA audit procedures for clinical trials and of how pharmaceutical companies, clinical investigators, and institutional review boards should prepare for regulatory audits. The book emphasizes the processes and procedures that should be implemented before a clinical audit occurs, making this an imperative guide to any professional in the drug manufacturing industry, including drug manufacturing companies, regulatory affairs personnel, clinical investigators, and quality assurance professionals. Among the topics discussed: Good Clinical Practices and therapeutic product development in clinical research The roles of the sponsor of a clinical investigation, the IRB, or independent ethics committee The roles and responsibilities of the clinical trial investigator The inspection preparation The Audit Report and the Form 483 Warning letters issued to clinical investigators and clinical trial sponsors and their impact on product development