Current Audits



2011/12 CEM clinical audits

Please download details of the CEM 2011 audit programme. The aim of the College audit programme is to measure the quality of care in EDs against the CEM clinical standards.  It will also provide a comparison with other EDs and help EDs improve the quality and safety of the care they provide to patients.

Pain in Children & Severe Sepsis & Septic Shock

Two audits are being conducted this year which are similar in methodology to previous CEM audits: pain in children and severe sepsis & septic shock.  All EDs are strongly encouraged to participate so that we can improve on the 88% participation in 2010.

Data for these 2 audits should be collected between 1 August 2011 and 31 January 2012. Full instructions on how to complete the audits can be found in the data collection tools:

Download 2011 Pain in Children audit data collection tool

Download 2011 Severe Sepsis & Septic Shock audit data collection tool

Data should be returned to the College by 10 February 2012. We are aiming to cirulate reports to participating EDs in April 2012.

Consultant Sign-Off

In December 2010 the College of Emergency Medicine published a standard for “Consultant Sign-Off” in UK and ROI Emergency Departments. This included an undertaking to audit and review the standard during 2011, and the College has therefore conducted a national audit of the standard in September 2011.(Download the Consultant Sign-Off Audit Statement published on 05/08/2011).

The purpose of the audit was to identify current levels of compliance with the College standard and the impact of this standard on current practice, in order to inform subsequent review.

THIS AUDIT HAS NOW CLOSED TO DATA SUBMISSIONS. Reports were sent to each participating ED on 22 December 2011. An executive summary is being prepared which will be published here in early 2012.

Download the UK findings for the Consultant SIgn-Off Audit

The College and the Clinical Effectiveness Committee would like to thank all ED staff for their continued support of the national CEM audit programme.

 

2012/13 CEM clinical audits

We currently plan to audit the following conditions (please note these are not confirmed and are subject to change): 

  • Fever in children
  • #NOF
  • Renal colic

 We will confirm the audits for 2012/13 and future years in early 2012.

External Audits

 

4th National Audit Project of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Difficult Airway Society - Major Complications of Airway Management in the UK

Following nearly three years of detailed planning and considerable work by all those involved the results of the 4th National Audit Project of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Difficult Airway Society have been published (30th March 2011). The full report is available at: http://www.rcoa.ac.uk/index.asp?PageID=1089 . CEM has been a key partner in this work, which includes chapters on the major complications of airway management occurring in both the ED and ITU. The report contains a detailed section (Chapter 10; pages 79 to 85) on the ED and makes important reading with key lessons including the need for enhanced cooperation and planning with our anaesthetic colleagues, the routine use of waveform capnography in all intubated patients and the high failure rate of emergency needle cricothyroidotomy when compared to surgical cricothyroidotomy undertaken in both the ED and elsewhere.

This report is likely to have a profound influence on anaesthetic practice in the UK, with the potential to improve the quality and safety of airway management in the ED. I would strongly recommend it. Professor Jonathan Benger, CEM Emergency Airway Lead

 

National Audit of Seizure management in Hospitals (NASH)

This audit is being conducted by the University of Liverpool. We encourage EDs to participate if possible - please read this update from Steff Nash (16th Mar 2011). Details are available at www.nashstudy.org.uk

 

Urgent and Emergency Care Clinical Audit Toolkit

A learning tool to support the quality of urgent and emergency care services for patients has being launched on 30th March 2011 by the Royal College of General Practitioners. Go to the Audit Guidance page for more information and to download the toolkit.

 

NCAPOP and Audit Resources

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) manages and develops the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). In addition HQIP is developing guidance and resources to assist local clinical audit programmes. www.hqip.org.uk

 

Audit contacts

It is important for the College to maintain contact details for Consultants and administrators responsible for audit in their Departments in order to keep them informed of audit developments. Please notify the College administrator of any changes to your contact details (see details below).

 

Support

Should you have any questions please e-mail philip.mcmillan@collemergencymed.ac.uk or phone 020 7067 1269.

 

Results

Your Department’s audit data will be compared against previous and national results. Reports for 2010/11 were e-mailed to EDs on Thursday 28th April 2011.

 

Previous audit results