Enhancing the quality of workplace interaction through reflective engagement with clinical audit

Abstract

In this discussion paper, it is suggested that uni‐professional clinical audits could be used for reflective dialogue centred inter‐professional education opportunities. Using an analysis of two medical audits that illustrate how uni‐professional audit might reinforce mistaken assumptions about inter‐professional situations, it is argued that there is a need to challenge the current audit culture, emphasizing enhancement of practice rather than compliance‐based assurance. To realize the refocusing of the audit process from one of quality assurance to one of quality enhancement, this paper suggests that there needs to be a shift in the balance of audit process outcomes which are essentially pragmatic and compliance oriented to more dialogic formative outcomes that require the auditors to have an interactive relationship with both trainee healthcare providers (i.e. pre‐registration medics, nurses and allied healthcare providers) as well as a discursive one with other post‐registration professionals.

Keywords:

• reflective practice
• inter‐professionalism
• medical education
• medical audit
• quality enhancement

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dr Valerie Webster, Department of Physiotherapy, Podiatry and Radiography, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Graham MacIntosh, Department of Nursing and Healthcare, University of Glasgow, for their support of and feedback on this project.

Notes

1. For example, ‘Normal Saline 150 mls/hr’.

2. For example, ‘500 mls Normal Saline over one hour to replace fasting losses, followed by 150mls per hour while nil by mouth’.