As a past co-chair of Quality Practice Award I have read many submissions from practices where the criterion requested has been to carry out an audit. I have been continually surprised by the lack of awareness of basic audit methodology demonstrated by these practices aspiring to this gold standard award. This is especially concerning as the ability to carry out a full audit once every 5 years is a requirement for revalidation.
There was a very large range of posters at the recent RCGP conference in Glasgow that were placed into categories. One such category was ‘audit’. Being aware of the poor awareness of audit methodology among QPA candidate practices, I decided to do an audit of the posters in the ‘audit’ category.
Criterion 1. An audit should have clear criteria and standards described.
Standard: 100%
Criterion 2. An audit should have a second data collection to show whether change has been successful or not.
Standard: 100%
Data collection 1 October 2012
There were 18 posters in the ‘Audit’ category.
Criterion 1. Of the 18 posters, seven (39%) described criteria and standards (this was allowing as a positive result, any attempt to state the aspect of good practice being measured, and a level of achievement towards that aspect even if the words ‘criteria’ and ‘standards’ were not used).
Criterion 2. Of the 18 posters, only three (17%) went as far as providing a second data collection.
Analysis of data collection 1
Most of the posters were surveys and, although describing interesting pieces of work, were not audits. These had been wrongly classified as audits for the conference. Does this indicate a lack of audit awareness among those in the RCGP responsible for the poster display?
Change
There needs to be much more learning about audit methodology and that this needs to be across the entire primary care workforce. We could find audit to be a major issue for revalidation if this is not addressed.
Of course, my audit fails my own test of being an audit as I have not enacted change personally. But I do look forward to the Data Collection 2 in Harrogate next autumn.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2012
