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ANZCA and FPM CPD Program resources: Clinical audit

Activity: Clinical audit of own practice or significant input into a group audit of practice Practice evaluation - Measuring outcomes
Mandatory activity (clinical practice): One of four potential practice evaluationMulti-source feedback; Peer review of practice; Patient experience survey; Clinical audit activities

Clinical audit of own practice or significant input into group audit of practice

  • The objective is collecting data on practice, reflecting on the results and considering practice changes if areas for improvement are identified.

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  • Can involve one CPD participant or a group of practitioners in one or more disciplines - for example: an anaesthetist and surgeon could jointly audit their patient outcomes
  • Compare procedures, processes or outcomes of health or patient care in anaesthesia, perioperative medicine, pain medicine or diving and hyperbaric medicine, with best practice standards in that domain - for example: Audit a Paediatric Rapid Sequence Induction process and consider variations in practice; or undertake a review of epidural procedures and outcomes; or perform a PACU audit examining airway complications
  • Audit the outcomes of a department or group of specialists, comparing with state, national or international benchmarks.
  • Audit your own clinical performance in an area of practice compared with those of your peers (department, practice or other group of colleagues).
  • Trial an alternate practice model followed by evaluation - for example: trial of a "closed model" of HDU compared to the previous "open model" of HDU
  • The college also offers some clinical audit templates, developed by fellows from across Australia and New Zealand. These are available via Learn@ANZCA (see Learn@ANZCA box).

External resources

The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) has developed a publication titled Raising the Standards: RCoA quality improvement compendium, which provides examples of achievable audits focused mainly on measurement against defined process standards.

ANZCA gratefully acknowledges the RCoA’s willingness to make this document available for our participants. Ready-to-use audit topics and samples relevant to clinical care are presented as a series of chapters (which include perioperative care, pain medicine, intensive care medicine).

The Medical Council of New Zealand website outlines their expectations on audit with some examples relevant to clinical practice.

Learn@ANZCA

Use the links below to access additional support resources contained on the Learn@ANZCA platform.

Note: Resources located in Learn@ANZCA require that you first register before accessing.

ANZCA & FPM resources

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