These are brief notes to help you when completing a clinical audit proposal. If you would like further assistance please contact your clinical audit facilitator who will be happy to help you.

How To guides for each of the different aspects of the clinical audit process are available at it is recommended you read ‘How to do Clinical Audit – a brief guide’which will refer you to the other How To booklets as necessary.

  1. Title:
  • A short name for the project, that can easily be fitted onto reports and presentations, e.g. “Re-audit of leg ulcer management”
  1. Other members of project team and other participation details:
  • To make your project work you must involve:
  • representatives of all the staff groups who deliver the aspect of care being audited
  • key staff who will be involved in implementing any changes identified as necessary to address shortfalls revealed by the audit results
  • Ideally include them in the audit team – as a minimum, make sure the senior staff are aware of the project, and willing to co-operate with the action plan
  1. Background:
  • Describe the current situation and include responses to the following questions:
  • What is prompting you to look at this topic?
  • Why do you think this is a priority area for action?
  • What benefits for patients do you hope to bring about by doing this audit?
  1. Aim & Objectives
  • This section details what you want to achieve by carrying out this project and should clarify and expand on the project title
  • The aim is a broad statement or question describing your overall goal (e.g. “to improve management of XX” or “Are we following UHBristol guidelines for YY?”
  • Your aim should then be broken down into a series of smaller steps or objectives.
  • Objectives should not go to the detail of specifying what you will be measuring in your audit – this is addressed by your standards
  1. Data Collection Method:
  • The best method will depend on your audit topic and whether the data items you need are already recorded routinely or not
  • If you discuss your project with your clinical audit facilitator before drafting a data collection tool they will help you to make sure you collect all the data items you need.
  • You should only collect the data items necessary to calculate compliance with the standards. Extra data willadd to your workload without providing any benefit, and contravenes the Data Protection Act.
  • Take time to consider how you will analyse the data once you’ve collected it:
  • Do you want to transfer your data into electronic format to analyse?
  • Who will do this?
  • Do you have the skills needed for analysis or do you need help?
  • Piloting your data collection method and analysis makes sure your questions are clear and unambiguous and that you can get the information you need. You then have a chance to amend your form as necessary before it’s used on your full audit sample
  1. Audit Sample:
  • Sample selection criteria – what do all the patients relevant to your audit have in common? When describing this, please include responses to the questions below:
  • Which hospital/departmental database will you use to identify relevant patients? What codes will you use? (e.g. ICD10 or OPCS codes)
  • If you are not using a database to identify patients, what other method will you use?
  • Sample size can be defined by time period or by an agreed number of patients to be audited. The number of cases audited should be:
  • large enough to convince staff of need for changes
  • not larger than necessary, as this wastes time, effort and resources
  • As a guide 20 to 50 cases are usually sufficient to show how well standards are being met. If you propose to look at more cases than this, please discuss this with your audit facilitator.
  • Sampling strategies include:
  • Taking a random sample of patients seen within your audit time frame
  • Restricting the time frame (e.g. all patients seen last month)
  • Choosing (for example) ‘the first 20 patients after’ or ‘the last 30 patients before’ a specified date