Blogs

Just Say Yes, Please

Published: 10 Aug 2020

At this time last year, to mark the arrival of the next cohort of junior doctors arriving or turning round, I wrote a blog entitled Just Say No. This was to suggest that, on induction with your new educational supervisor, if they suggested getting out 20 sets of case notes and doing an “audit”, that this offer was declined and a more productive quality improvement activity pursued (with the caveat that if the supervisor was to be intimately involved in the notes review, that that would be acceptable).

The Baroness Cumberlege Report – First do no harm (Published 8th July 2020)

Published: 22 Jul 2020

The report of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (IMMDs) The Cumberlege review has reported on three important clinical areas where harm has occurred; Primodos, sodium valproate and surgical mesh insertion for female urinary incontinence. The review has helped us identify a direction of travel in assuring new medical devices being introduced to treat a wide variety of conditions. The principals are generalisable and I believe we should use these as we develop additional devices registries. 2. This review into the treatment of female incontinence with surgical mesh is specific. It has given us interesting insights into the various vehicles that, in some respects, we take for granted, when holding patients’ data for review purposes; namely data bases and registries. In the course of this work, Cumberlege has defined databases and registries. These definitions, if accepted, can be extrapolated out into other areas where medical devices are implanted and further into other areas of healthcare.

HQIP response to “Institutional Use of National Clinical Audit by healthcare providers.”

Published: 26 May 2020

The recent paper -  Institutional Use of National Clinical Audit by healthcare providers McVey L, Alvardo N, Ken J at al. J Eval Clin Pract. 2020;1-8. DOI: 10.1111/jep.13403 - from colleagues looking into institutional use of National Clinical Audit, concluded that there is an imbalance between the benefits to institutions and the required resources for participating in the national audit programme. This study is based on interviews with 16 colleagues, is semi-structured and comes across as relying more on anecdote. There were additional interviews with 32 clinicians, although it is not clear how the findings from these colleagues reflect on the reported imbalance between the national programme and the Boards of Trusts.

Making patient information accessible and bagging a highly-commended award

Published: 14 Aug 2019

The Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme was highly commended in last year’s Richard Driscoll Memorial Award. Their award entry showed how they worked with patients to make information accessible and dynamic. In this blog post, project manager Bonnie Wiles explains more about their approach and what the award means to them.

Just Say No!

Published: 01 Aug 2019

This is the season for medical churn.

How a patient panel is driving improvement

Published: 02 Jul 2019

Iona Price is the chair of a national clinical audit patient panel. In this blog she explains how the panel is driving improvements in communications and collaboration.

Meaningful engagement: how do you get it right?

Published: 29 May 2019

Patient engagement advocate Linda Partridge shares her insight into what makes engagement and involvement with parents successful.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Published: 08 Jan 2019

Why calls for a national quality improvement programme overlook the debt owed to clinical audit. The recent article from Boyle and Keep is interesting as it does set out several of the perceived down sides of clinical audit, be it national or local. However, it suggests that substituting it with a National Quality Improvement Programme will rectify these perceived drawbacks.

NHS well equipped to deliver breast cancer care, but requires improvement for over 70s, new audit finds

Published: 14 Jul 2017

The National Audit of Breast Cancer in Older Patients, which is being published for the first time today by the Royal College of Surgeons and the Association of Breast Surgery, found that nationally, around 90% of women aged 50-69 years diagnosed with breast cancer had surgery.

National Dementia Audit: Important improvements in dementia care, but more support needed report finds

Published: 11 Jul 2017

Hospitals have made important changes to improve dementia care, but staff say more support is needed

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