ANNUAL REVIEW master Final3a - St Vincent's University Hospital

St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group Limited - Annual Review 2007
Clinical Audit Department
2007 was a productive year, with more awareness of the principles of clinical audit across the three hospitals
in the group. The department continues to support staff in the inclusion of audit within their daily practice.
This necessary mindshift seeks to get away from the idea that audit is an add-on to our daily workload.
Amassing evidence of good practice has been the central tenet of the audit function and we continue to
successfully achieve this goal. Another 35 audits completed in the year highlight the excellent level of care
and service that our hospitals provide to patients. Whether through surveys of patient satisfaction, measures
of clinical outcomes or the adherence to national or international standards, these audits highlight an
overwhelming level of excellence. Where issues for improvement have been identified at local level, the
impetus that drove the staff to audit their work in the first place becomes the enthusiasm to make the
necessary changes for the better.
Concern centres on the blunt instruments enacted for control of expenditure and recruitment at national
level. Such approaches can be detrimental to patient safety and excellence of care, where it has been clearly
shown that additional resources would not just benefit organisational delivery of healthcare but would
enhance efficiency or have a higher return on investment in the longer term. This blanket ban approach on
expenditure has had an arresting effect on the closure of some audit loops in our hospitals.
The Board of the hospital and the clinical governance committee continue to stand four square behind the
rollout of clinical audit across the hospitals. In a new development, a book containing all the poster
presentations at the audit masterclass was presented to each board member after the event. Copies of these
posters were also hung in the foyers of the hospitals, where other staff, patients and visitors could witness
examples of the high quality of healthcare being delivered across the group.
The group chief executive’s support in funding summer projects by medical students has been very effective
in driving forward the audit agenda. These students, some of which were at a very early stage in their medical
training, produced clear and effective audits under the supervision of consultants with significant learning for
the speciality and the organisation. This project had the added benefit of exposing undergraduates to the
principles of clinical audit and adding to the skills of medical students in preparation for employment as
qualified doctors. It is hoped to expand this project approach in following years, through greater linkages
with the relevant schools of University College Dublin.
Clinical audit is now established as a component of medical induction for junior doctors. This is very much
due to the re-engineering of the induction process by medical HR. This new approach has been highly
evaluated by our new medical staff and may serve as a model for other hospitals.
We continue to explore newer, different and more effective ways of educating staff in the practice of clinical
audit. We hosted another successful Clinical Audit Study Day and Masterclass with speakers from the
National Indicator Project in Denmark sharing their experience of clinical indicators with us. National and UK
leaders in quality and governance outlined possible ways forward for the group and helped set the scene for
even more audits at even higher standards of achievement. In house, having presentations from Internal
Return to Contents
12