National audit of Essence of Care
Outline of the project
The Healthcare Commission chose 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 objectives of the project were:
- To consult with key stakeholders on the identification of priority audit topics related to Essence of Care
- To make recommendations about those topics considered the most important and most feasible for national clinical audit, most likely to result in improvements in patient care, to identify any links to existing information systems, and to consider the most efficient and effective approaches to data collection
- To synthesise the findings from the scoping exercise into a final report to include an appraisal of options of a national audit on essence of care
The scoping work was undertaken between October 2007 and February 2008 by the Royal College of Nursing with advice and support provided by a multi-disciplinary steering committee. The consultation process involved an online questionnaire and a series of workshops - thankyou to all who participated in this.
Priorities identified
The top three priority topics for a national audit on essence of care were identified as:
- Food and Nutrition
- Communication
- Privacy and Dignity
Final report
The final report of the scoping project and the appendices are now available to download:
Report on a scoping exercise to identify priority topics for national audit on the Essence of Care: a report for the Healthcare Commission (PDF 265KB)
[see how to access PDF files]
Essence of Care National Audit of Nutrition
Following the scoping exercise undertaken by the Evaluating and Improving Team at the RCN Learning and Development Institute on behalf of the Healthcare Commission in 2008, a bid was submitted to undertake an Essence of Care National Audit of Food and Nutrition for the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP). This was unsuccessful.