National audit of Essence of Care

Outline of the project

The Healthcare Commission has chosen the Royal College of Nursing to lead a scoping project to evaluate the feasibility of a national audit process relating to Essence of Care. 

National clinical audit would provide an overarching indication of the impact of local work on Essence of Care topics in improving the quality and safety of patient care. The project will take a multidisciplinary approach and aims to engage a wide range of people (eg. patients, carers, clinical staff, senior staff, managers, and non-executive directors, other healthcare staff and other groups) to gain consensus for national audit.
 
The aims of the project are:

  1. To identify a ranked list of priority topics related to the Essence of Care
  2. To consider which topics are most feasible for national clinical audit and most like to result in improvements in the quality and safety of patient care
  3. To identify links to existing information systems and to consider the most streamlined and cost-effective approach to data collection.

Identifying priority topics for national audit

The questionnaire to identify priority topics for national clinical audit closed on 11 January 2008.  Thankyou to all who completed the questionnaire and participated in workshops.

The final report and recommendations arising from this work will be submitted to the Healthcare Commission on 31st January 2008.

Further information about the project and future developments will appear on the RCN website when available.