A Cross-Sectional Study of Experiences and Attitudes towards Clinical Audit of Farm Animal Veterinary Surgeons in the United Kingdom.

Katie Waine,Rachel S Dean,Jonathan Huxley,Marnie L Brennan,Chris Hudson

doi:10.3390/vetsci5040084

Abstract

Clinical audit is a quality improvement tool used to assess and improve the clinical services provided to patients. This is the first study to investigate the extent to which clinical audit is understood and utilised in farm animal veterinary practice. A cross-sectional study to collect experiences and attitudes of farm animal veterinary surgeons in the UK towards clinical audit was conducted using an online nationwide survey. The survey revealed that whilst just under three-quarters (n = 237/325; 73%) of responding veterinary surgeons had heard of clinical audit, nearly 50% (n = 148/301) had never been involved in a clinical audit of any species. The participants’ knowledge of what a clinical audit was varied substantially, with many respondents reporting not receiving training on clinical audit at the undergraduate or postgraduate level. Respondents that had participated in a clinical audit suggested that protected time away from clinical work was required for the process to be completed successfully. This novel study suggests that clinical audit is undertaken to some extent in farm animal practice and that practitioner perception is that it can bring benefits, but was felt that more resources and support were needed for it to be implemented successfully on a wider scale.

Highlights

Clinical audit is a quality improvement tool used to assess and improve the clinical services provided to patients [1,2,3]
The target population was Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) registered veterinary surgeons who worked in farm animal veterinary practice or undertook farm animal clinical work in the UK
Recent presentations at CPD events and some publications, these results suggest that more needs to be done by all stakeholders to reach veterinary surgeons in practice to advise them on what clinical audit is and how to use it

Summary

Introduction

Clinical audit is a quality improvement tool used to assess and improve the clinical services provided to patients [1,2,3]. It involves the collection of data prospectively or retrospectively in health care settings to answer a specific question relating to the delivery of clinical care. Viner [5] previously surveyed the attitudes of veterinary surgeons towards clinical audit, but analysis was not carried out looking at farm. Forty-five percent (n = 148/332) of the veterinary surgeons that participated carried out solely farm animal clinical work while 54% (n = 180/332) undertook a mixed clinical case load. The majority of the respondents used the words “assess”, “review”, “evaluate” or “analyse” in the definition they provided (Table 1)

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