Clinical audit: Time to mandate

Audit has been used in different contexts in health care system to evaluate patient care from assessment through outcome. It should not be taken as an on-off exercise; rather it is a systematic continuous process of quality improvement. The advantages of undertaking audit are promotion of good practice, providing opportunities for training and education, better use of resources and increase in efficiency. Clinical audit tends to be used as an umbrella term for any audit conducted by health care professionals. The best and the only method to perform an audit is the clinical audit cycle, which is a stepwise pattern of comparing data with the standards, to improve practice byimplementing change and monitoring. The standards are established criteria of practice taken into account for evaluating health care management. This could be done by integrating individual practice to the best available clinical evidence from systematic research, which is also termed as evidence based practice.