Welcome to the latest NQICAN blog. Since the last one in September – I am pleased to announce that I have been re-elected as NQICAN chair so I look forward to another 2 years in the role hopefully continuing our good work.
This week is Clinical Audit Awareness Week (CAAW) (20th-24th November) following on nicely from FAB change week & world antibiotics awareness week so I thought I would dedicate this blog to recommending 5 things to do during CAAW to help get the most out of the week which I will call NQICANs CAAW Big 5:
1.Promote Clinical Audit as a Quality Improvement Process
Please remember that Clinical Audit is a quality improvement process so lets make sure improvement to patient care is the main aim for your projects. Concerns were raised at NQICAN last week that CA is not being viewed or used as a QI process at both a local and national level and thus being inappropriately omitted from relevant work streams. So lets use this week to re-evaluate the audit projects that we are involved with and make sure you are clear how the project is helping to improve practice.
2. Join / post on the NQICAN Networking and Sharing Forum
As detailed in our last blog we launched our forum in September so if you work in the NHS or are a member of our networks join up this week and find out what is going on across our clinical audit / QI networks. So far we’ve had a brilliant uptake with over 300 applications to join the forum and nearly as many posts by members. Our aim is to make sharing and helping via the forum standard practice so lets start doing this if you haven’t started already.
3. Attend a CAAW event
There are lots of CAAW events happening across the country both in locally, regionally & nationally. Both HQIP and ourselves have produced summaries of the events that we are aware of. In my own trust we are having a staff vote for our annual clinical audit improvement awards and on Friday I will be helping judge the clinical audit competition at Northampton General. On Tuesday and Wednesday at Patient First – NQICAN will be co-hosting the QI Theatre again with HQIP – who will be live streaming some of the talks on Facebook. I will be speaking on the second day sharing some of the successes across our networks form the last year. Come and say hello if you are attending the event.
4. Take a look at National Clinical Audit Benchmarking website
The National Clinical Audit Benchmarking (NCAB) website will be launching on Monday (20th Nov) with the first six audits as originally planned. The NCAB provides a visual snapshot of individual Trust audit data set against individual national benchmarks. The initiative was originally created in collaboration between HQIP and CQC, with a vision to enhance the way not just inspectors, but also medical directors, local clinical audit teams and others engage, interact with and share clinical audit data. NQICAN have been involved in its development and I hope the NCAB helps drive further improvement where required.
5. Make a Pledge or Nominate your Audit Hero
All awareness campaigns these days have a twitter # so please tweet and share what you are doing this week with a #CAAW in the tweet. The Clinical audit support centre have produced a variety of resources for the week including an ‘I’m backing clinical audit’ pledge board so please use these & post pictures of your pledges. HQIP are also asking for Audit Hero nominations – so why don’t you put forward a colleague who has gone the extra mile to make a difference.
Enjoy the week, have some fun & I look forward to seeing you share your clinical audit events and successes.
Carl Walker
NQICAN Chair
@cwwalker10 @nqican