Writing a clinical audit report

It is recommended that you structure your audit report in the following way:

Title: Give your audit a title that describes what is being audited.

Background: Provide rationale for topic selection and include background information that is essential to understanding a process or problem.

Aim and objectives: The aim describes what you want to achieve. The objectives describe what you are going to measure to show that your aim has been met.

Standards: You must detail the standards used to compare your practice against. Where possible, published national, regional or local standards should be used.

Method: Describe what data was collected, how it was collected and how it was analysed.

Results/conclusion: Describe what the data tells you about current practice.

Recommendations: Describe any suggestions for improvement.

Action plan: Make an action plan from the recommendations with responsibilities for action and a timescale for implementation. Identify who will implement the action plan and provide a re-audit date.

Plan the reaudit: Set a timescale for a reaudit (not before changes have been made). The reaudit should use the same design as the audit but you only need to reaudit standards where changes have been made (unless the changes may have affected other standards).

When completed, write up the details of the reaudit in the same manner.