Attached.

Running Head: Principles and practices for hospital auditing

Principles and practices for hospital auditing
Student:
Professor:
Course:
Date:

1

Principles and practices for hospital auditing

2
Introduction

Improvement and evaluation of quality of care provided to the patients are of critical
essence in the daily hospital practice and health policy financing and planning. Many different
tools have been developed including health technology assessment, incident analysis and hospital
audit. Hospital auditing helps to provide safe and quality patient care, other than maintaining
standards of patient care. To be specific, patients who suffer from chronic renal diseases, present
many challenges that have been set for topics for hospital audit projects, for instance anemia,
hypertension and mineral metabolism management. This paper therefore examines the principles
and practices of hospital auditing.
Challenges and Problems
Achieving successful hospital auditing is not without its challenges and problems. Given
the divergent and disparate opinions held about hospital auditing, the problems and challenges to
its implementation does not come as a surprise. The main challenges faced by hospital auditing
can be broadly classified under five major headings: organizational impediments, lack of an
overall auditing plan, relationships between the team and team members, lack of advice or
proficiency in project analysis and design, and inadequate resources.
Review of the literature
Even though the hospital auditing idea has been present for over one hundred years, it
was basically viewed to be professionals’ educational tool. Different professionals including
nurses and doctors conducted separate audits. Incorporation of quality assurance tools, (making
improvements, recording and reporting performance, data collection and standard setting),
advanced hospital audit to its present status as a quality improvement tool. However, the

Principles and practices for hospital auditing
professionals who perform hospital audits, to be specific, those in resource-limited settings,
continue to face challenges.
In practice, lots of published audits halt at evaluating areas for alterations or making
recommendations. In a review of published pediatric audits, only 38% defined a standard for the
audit and 5.9% finalized the cycle to re-audit. Junior doctors handling hospital audits in the
United Kingdom have had similar confusion, where they did not identify a re-audit as part and
parcel of the elementary audit. Another confusion area applies to the rigor of the performance
and design of the studies. As an audit may not be considered as a study, it can be perceived as
less accurate design, conduct and analysis than what is really required. Audit results can be
implemented right away l...