Promoting user involvement in clinical audit: surveys of audit committees in primary and secondary care

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The Department of Health has suggested that organizations should develop mechanisms to ensure successful input from patients and carers into clinical audit processes, advocating the involvement of consumers at all stages of the audit cycle. Two national surveys, of Trust Clinical Audit Committees and Medical Audit Advisory Groups respectively, explored the extent to which audit committees involve users, either as committee members or in relation to other methods of involvement in the audit process. The results indicate limited but increasing involvement of users as audit committee members, but there are benefits, limitations and barriers to user membership. Other reported activities suggest that the most widespread method of involving users is in user satisfaction surveys with little systematic evidence of input to the decision‐making stage and negotiation of topics for audit. The research suggests that guidance is needed on how to involve users effectively at different stages in the audit cycle.