Tool 9 – Undertake an audit of how well established self care support is in your practice, PCT or care agency

Why you should use this tool

Clinical audit helps you to review the way your organisation works as a whole – and make improvements. It will help you to improve the quality of care you provide.

What to do

Design your audit of an aspect of how you and others in the practice/PCT/care agency are supporting self care among patients around the steps of the audit cycle represented in the diagram overleaf.

Prioritise and select the topic of your audit by working with others in your team to reach a decision.
Set objectives relating to the reason(s) why the audit is being carried out.
Review the literature for that topic, and agree the criteria and standards that you think are reasonable.
Design the way in which you will do the audit.
Collect the data and look at them.
Meet with colleagues or your team to discuss the findings and determine the reasons for the results.
Make a timetabled action plan to implement any changes that are needed.
Review your standards – should you keep the standards you previously set, are they unrealistic or not challenging enough?
Re-audit – creating successive audit cycles

Time:

this will depend on the complexity of the audit, how much data gathering is involved etc.

How it works

The audit will be worthwhile if the objective of your audit is about:
assessing whether or not standards are being met in realtion to supporting self care for patients
determining whether standards are improving
monitoring the level of patients’ compliance or concordance with treatment or self care advice
changing inadequate current practice.

What to do next

Follow the stages of the audit cycle, including re-audit after changes have been made.

For more information on this tool, please click on Tool 9.

Audit cycle