Our Services A - Z - Quality Improvement & Clinical Audit Department

Clinical Audit is a key process in a cycle of continuous quality improvement, through the review of care/services provided against evidence based standards.

In order to assist this process the Trusts Quality Improvement & Clinical Audit (QICA) Department provides a wide range of support and advice to Trust staff, both clinical and non-clinical, who are involved with an audit project (at National; Regional or Local/Trust level), or undertaking a user survey (to both staff and patients).

The QICA team have a broad knowledge and can assist with all aspects of undertaking Clinical Audit and Quality Improvement Projects (QIP).

Clinical Audit measures and improves compliance with guidelines, contributing to better patient outcomes, meeting patient needs and cost savings.

The QICA team also register Surveys and provide support where possible for projects where clinical data alone is not enough.  

The NICE compliance Coordinator collates all evidence of the Trusts NICE compliance, provided by the Clinical leads. The collated evidence is reviewed by the Chief Executive on a quarterly basis via the Clinical Effectiveness Council.

Whiston Hospital has been an active member of national trauma audit since 1994; the TARN (Trauma Audit Research Network) database was the largest trauma database in Europe.  In April 2024 TARN was renamed NMTR (National Major Trauma Registry) and now sits under NHS England.  

In 2023, Whiston Hospital was peer reviewed by the regional trauma network operational delivery network and assessed against the national measures of quality in place for trauma receiving units.  The Trust was highly commended in numerous areas including the excellent team approach to trauma data collection, how well data is used to affect change and the range of audits that had been completed at Whiston using this dataset. Whiston’s NMTR data reports into the Whiston Trauma Working Group and up to the Clinical Effectiveness Council.