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Practical experience from a regional secure unit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Adrian James*
Affiliation:
Forensic Psychiatry, Fromeside Clinic, Blackberry Hill, Stapleton, Bristol BS16 1ED
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The Royal College of Psychiatrists' Working Party on Medical Audit has emphasised the multidisciplinary nature of patient care in psychiatry (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989). Much has been published on individual audit topics and on definitions of the various aspects of audit such as peer review, performance indicators and quality assurance. The essential element of audit is its systematic nature and little has been written concerning an overall structure for clinical audit within an individual psychiatric setting. It is not sufficient to start with ‘a simple project with minimum of cost in terms of both time and money expended’, as recommended by the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Working Party. What is needed is an overall structure for regular review so that the systematic nature of the process is not lost and that recommendations from audit meetings are reviewed regularly for their usefulness and level of implementation.

Type
Audit in practice
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

Department of Health (1991) Medical Audit in the Hospital and Community Health Services. Assuring the quality of medical care: Implementations of Medical and Dental Audit in the Hospital and Community Health Services Circular No. HC(91)2.Google Scholar
Royal College of Psychiatrists (1989) Preliminary report on medical audit. Psychiatric Bulletin, 13, 577580.Google Scholar
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