Description
Over recent years, many types of audits are commonly used in hospital care to promote quality improvements. Variable, inconsistent results and the often limited effectiveness of audits in improving the quality of hospital care suggest that using audits and implementing the suggested improvements are not straightforward processes. Moreover, previous reviews have failed to recognise the variation in contexts for audits and have often combined results from diverse settings,which may blur the evidence for whether or not audits are successful in improving the quality of hospital care.
The objectives of this realist review are (i) to understand how and why audits might, or might not, work in producing the intended outcome of improved quality of care and (ii) to examine under what circumstances audits could potentially be effective.
A realist review is a theory-driven approach, which examines the interaction between the intervention, the context (C) within which it is applied, the mechanism (M) that describes how the actors use the resources available to them and the outcome (O) in a sample of primary studies. These interactions are formally articulated as context-mechanism-outcome configurations (CMOcs).
Of the fifty included articles, 68% focus on clinical audit, 18% on accreditation, 12% on peer review and 2% on certification. The CMO configurations of this realist review will be presented during the meeting.
A better understanding of how these different types of audits ‘work’, the human factors involved, and how context might impact on the intended outcome of improved healthcare quality, will inform stakeholders in their decision-making about which type of audit to use and how to tailor and implement audits within their local context. The CMO configurations which are identified in this realist review are refined and tested in a follow-up multiple case study, which is now being carried out.
| Period | 8-Feb-2019 |
|---|---|
| Event title | LEARN symposium 2019 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | GroningenShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | Regional |