In the UK a distinction is made between "Clinical Audit" and research
roughly as follows.
Research asks "What ought we to be doing"?
Audit asks "What are we doing"?
So, for example if you want to find out whether aspirin prevents further
strokes (what ought we to be doing) you carry out a properly designed
double blind trial (research). From this research you can produce
evidence-based guidelines.
If on the other hand the research has been done, and you accept that
patients ought to be given aspirin after strokes, and you want to check
that people in your hospital have been given aspirin as per your
evidence-based guideline, you carry out an audit. Check the records of
this year's discharges and see how you're doing (audit).
There was an article in the BMJ I think, early 90s I think, about this.
Sorry I haven't got the reference to hand. There should be plenty of
others because of the interest in "Clinical Audit" in the UK in the
90s.
In practice, things often get a bit "grey", but the basic principles
seem perfectly clear.
Hope this is helpful.
Richard Hancock PhD
Clinical Audit Analyst
Burton Hospitals NHS Trust
UK
In message <7AA2919E47DED1118CD70008C724BACE077E11A5@exchange_03>,
Women's Health Information Services <[log in to unmask]> writes
>I am interested to hear of any countries or research centres who have
>tackled the difficult area of defining audit and whether policies or
>guidelines have been developed to provide clarity on what constitutes an
>audit and when particular answers being sought from a review of clinical
>records moves into the area of being a research study. This lack of clarity
>about what is audit and what is research continues to be an issue in New
>Zealand. Various views and opinions have been expressed over the years but
>there is no shared understanding or agreement on how this distinction is
>determined. This has obvious implications for patients/participants as there
>are specific safeguards, consent procedures and ethical requirements to be
>met before a research study can proceed. However, an audit is able to
>proceed without any of these taking place.
>Judi Strid
>Women's Health Action
>Auckland
>New Zealand
--
Richard Hancock
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