Nursing Audit

Nursing audit

The term " Audit" has been derived from the latin word " Audire " which means "To hear" Hence an auditor is a person who hears or listens.or official examination of Quality.  

  • Quality - a judgment of what constitutes good or bad.
  • Audit - a systematic and critical examination to examine or verify.

DEFINITION

Nursing audit - 

  1. It is the assessment of the quality of nursing care.
  2.  Uses a record as an aid in evaluating the quality of patient care.
  •  Nursing audit is defined as the evaluation of nursing care in retrospect through analysis of nursing records. It is a systematic format and written appraisal by nurses of the quality of content and the process of nursing service from the nursing records of the discharged patient.
  1. According to Elison "Nursing audit refers to assessment of the quality of clinical nursing".
  2. According to Goster Walfer
  •  Nursing Audit is an exercise to find out whether good nursing practices are followed.
  • The audit is a means by which nurses themselves can define standards from their point of view and describe the actual practice of nursing.

PURPOSES OF NURSING AUDIT

  • To evaluating nursing care given.
  • Achieves deserved and feasible quality of nursing care.
  • Verification: stimulant to better records.
  •  Focuses on care provided and on care provider.
  •  Contributes to research.
  •  Review of professional work or in other words the quality of nursing care ie, we try to see how far the nurses have confirmed to the norms and standards of nursing practice while taking care of patients.

Type of Nursing Audit-

According to Methodology  adopted by the Auditor's 

1. Concurrent nursing audit-/Prospective

  • The information is gathered at the time care is given or this type of audit take place while the patient is reciving care in the hospitals.
  • Assessing  the patient at the bed side in relation to pre determined criteria.

Method- Interviewing, self analysis and evaluation information discussions with senior nursing staff peer discussion team discussion, review of client record's 

2. Retrospective nursing audit

  • This means looking back at what has happened in the past.
  • Assessment of the quality of care by examining patient records after discharges.

According to type of auditor's 

1. Internal Audit- review of work is done by peers or nursing personnel continuously.

2.Eexternal audit. -

  • Audit carried out by the outside agency.
  • usually periodically test,completeness and accurscy of internal audit is done.review is done by non nursing administration.

Other Types

1. Structure audit-

  • Evaluating of environment in which care is given.
  • Relationship between quality care and appropriate structure. 

2. Process Audit.-

  • It is used to measure the process of care whether practice standard are being fulfilled or not.
  • This audit show a relationship between quality of nursing and quality of care provided.

3. Outcome Audit

Evaluation the end result of care given.this audit demonstrates  the quality of care that was provided.

Process of Nursing Audit-

Stage of nursing process are-

1. Identify the problem or issue

2. Define criteria and standard

3. Data collection

4.Compare performance with criteria and standard

5. Implementing changes

ADVANTAGES OF NURSING AUDIT
Nursing audit.........

  • Is a tool as part of quality assurance  programme.
  • Ist a method of measuring of all dimension of nursing.
  • Identifies strong and week points.
  • Has legal value.
  • Contributes in nursing research.
  • May be used as proposal for staffing requirement's 
  • Assesses the work of all of those involved in recording care.

 DISADVANTAGES OF THE NURSING AUDIT

Nursing audit.........

  1. Is not useful where nursing process is not applied.
  2. Is difficult to anayze when components overlap 
  3. Is time consuming
  4. Need experts.
  5. Only evaluates documentation , not nursing care.

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