Clearly identify and discuss at least one professional issue you have identified.

Nursing Audit

1. Introduce your audit topic and explain the relationship between your chosen audit topic and patient safety using the National Safety and Quality Health Services Standards (2015) as a starting point. Identify which specific standard and sub-standard(s) your chosen audit topic relates to and then discuss how this can impact patient safety. You should look beyond the Standards for your evidence.

2. Construct a concise summary of the evidence for best practice related to the audit topic (this may be done using a table format). Evidence based research includes peer-reviewed journal articles, best practice sheets and systematic review. This needs to be specific to your chosen audit topic. For example, if you have chosen medication charts the best practice should relate to the completion of medication charts, and not medication safety in general.

3. Present a summary of the results of your audit in table form. This should include results for each patient and each audit topic as well as an overall benchmark result. You should include a statement of how your benchmark compares with the recommended benchmark.

4. Compare and contrast your audit results with the best practice evidence. No new evidence should appear in this section – all best practice should have been identified previously. In this section you are discussing whether your results show that the practice in this clinical area is based on best practice. You should identify strengths and areas for improvement and the results overall.

5. Critique your own practice related to the audit topic based upon the evidence for best practice to answer the following question “Is the care I provide holistic and evidence based?” This should be a discussion specific to the audit topic and using the best practice evidence summarised as per point 3 above.

6. Clearly identify and discuss at least one professional issue you have identified. This can be from your audit results, your self-assessment or your experience conducting the audit. Please use evidence in your discussion of the importance of this professional issue to the chosen audit topic and patient safety.