27754 Professionalising clinical audit

Professional development of clinical audit staff

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Introduction

Working in clinical audit is a role linked to many other related roles in healthcare services. The development of staff working in this area is important to HQIP. This page groups together a range of material and links to help develop clinical audit as a profession.

Increasingly, clinical audit needs to be seen in the context of quality improvement as a whole. HQIP emphasises that clinical audit is a quality improvement method and so at local level there should be increasing linkage between those in audit and quality improvement roles. This could be by alignment of teams, or even of shared roles. The purpose must be to ensure that audit drives quality improvement and that the findings of audit are actively used, through effective application of quality improvement methods; to drive change and improvements in clinical care.

We encourage managers of Trusts to look at the organisation of their teams and explore how greater alignment between these functions could improve quality. We will publish on this site good examples of integrated practice.

The KSF

This section includes results of HQIP's detailed analysis into job descriptions and Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) outlines for clinical audit staff. The study forms part of a project to develop job descriptions and KSF outlines for clinical audit staff. For this HQIP commissioned Healthcare Quality Quest (HQQ) to carry out a review of published job descriptions of clinical audit staff working in the NHS and other relevant organisations. This body of material enables local staff and their managers to review posts and ensure their staff’s roles align to common practice UK wide.
Professional body for quality improvement consultation results

The project was part of HQIP's wider objective of championing professionalisation for quality improvement staff in health and social care. We conducted a review of audit and QI staff in the autumn of 2011 to determine the degree of interest in creating a professional body to represent audit staff. Broadly, the results show that while there is some support for the move, it is not currently deemed appropriate and also would not currently be viable - due in some part to respondents being either unable or unwilling to commit the funds necessary to support such a project.

HQIP commissioned the Social Care Association (SCA) to carry out the consultation, which worked with the Professional Association Research Network (PARN) to gather and assess the results. Some 273 questionnaires were completed between October and December 2011 alongside interviews and focus groups, including speaking with eleven clinical audit networks and their attending members.

Education and training for clinical audit work

HQIP has produced guidance on the content and standards for training for those who work in clinical audit:

See also our wider views on training for work in quality improvement.

Courses available

Please see the list below of clinical audit courses HQIP is aware of which are open to staff from organisations outside of the provider involved (NB: HQIP does not offer endorsement of any of these courses).

HQIP events/workshops

New workshops are being developed with details to follow in due course.

Clinical audit careers

NHS jobs: http://www.jobs.nhs.uk/index.html

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