Welcome to Clinical Audit Awareness Week!

This week (1st – 7th November), RCVS Knowledge will be celebrating clinical audits by sharing exciting news, resources, and discussions with you.  

Clinical audits provide a structure to continually improve patient care, while offering further benefits for the team and clients. They can be carried out by any team member and are a fantastic place to start implementing Quality Improvement in your practice.

As you can tell, we love clinical audits and the benefits they bring to teams, clients, and patients – and, if you don't already, we hope that by the end of this week, you will too!

Whether auditing is a regular part of your practice or something you’ve never tried, this week is for you. Some highlights from this week will include:

Knowledge Awards case examples – we will be sharing some of the Champion and Highly Commended case examples from the 2021 Knowledge Awards. These are a great way to see how other teams are implementing audits in practice, and how they are learning and making improvements from the results they see – they may also provide inspiration for you to start your own projects or apply for this year’s awards! The awards also celebrate QI in education, and you can listen to our QI Clinical Lead (RVN) Louise Northway chat to Samantha Fontaine, Course Leader of the University of Glasgow’s postgraduate course in Advanced Veterinary Nursing, in the first of our Knowledge Natter series now.

The National Audit for Small Animal Neutering (NASAN) results – the national routine neutering benchmarking results for 2021, and the updated results for 2020 have been published on the vetAUDIT website. You’ll be able to download the data for your own audits.

Join us on Thursday 4 November at 7pm for a Facebook Live Q&A with our fabulous Audit A-Team! Share your auditing wins and woes with our friendly and expert team, featuring vets (Agony Aunt) Pam Mosedale and Angela Rayner, and vet nurses Amanda Curtis and Amelia Poole, who will share their insights and advice. Make sure to register your interest on our Facebook event.

Stay tuned for the next series of the QI Boxset, which will offer an in-depth look into clinical audits, in an easily accessible way that works for you. We offer podcasts, webinars, and reading resources from a range of experts, and you can work your way through our recommended route or, like streaming services, pick and choose what you want to watch and listen to. You can catch up with the first series now.

And there's more – we have an impressive collection of auditing resources that are freely available on our website. If you’re an audit newbie, why not try our free Clinical Audit CPD course? It is designed to walk you through the process of clinical audits. If you’re looking for inspiration for your next audit, our case examples are a great place to start.

Let us know what you are doing, we also want to hear from you throughout the week! What do you audit? What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out? Which resources have you found the most useful on your QI journey? Join in the conversation by using the hashtag #CAAW21 and tagging us @rcvsknowledge - on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.