Abstract
The aim of this paper is to start a debate about ethical issues associated with the practice of clinical audit. This is an area that has not received much consideration. The role of clinical audit is to raise general clinical standards. The ethical issues of clinical audit may have far-reaching consequences for clinicians, patients, health care providers and purchasers. Guidance is required to provide consistency in approach so that those involved in clinical audit, at whatever level, can be confident that they are following good practice. Clinicians and managers often think of good practice as being a technical matter. The main point of this paper is to bring out important ethical dimensions to good practice.
Full text
PDF
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Baker R., Hearnshaw H., Cooper A., Cheater F., Robertson N. Assessing the work of medical audit advisory groups in promoting audit in general practice. Qual Health Care. 1995 Dec;4(4):234–239. doi: 10.1136/qshc.4.4.234. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Firth-Cozens J., Storer D. Registrars' and senior registrars' perceptions of their audit activities. Qual Health Care. 1992 Sep;1(3):161–164. doi: 10.1136/qshc.1.3.161. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Kinn S. R., Smith P. J. Medical audit activity in primary and secondary care in the west of Scotland. Health Bull (Edinb) 1996 May;54(3):252–257. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Koschnitzke L., McCracken S. C., Pranulis M. F. Ethical considerations for quality assurance versus scientific research. West J Nurs Res. 1992 Jun;14(3):392–396. doi: 10.1177/019394599201400311. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Madhok R. Audit and research. Lancet. 1992 Oct 31;340(8827):1103–1104. doi: 10.1016/0140-6736(92)93129-b. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Rix G., Cutting K. Clinical audit, the case for ethical scrutiny? Int J Health Care Qual Assur. 1996;9(6):18–20. doi: 10.1108/09526869610128223. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]