Reducing the blame culture through clinical audit in nuclear medicine: a mixed methods study (2017)

Summary

A lack of medical engagement is known to represent a significant barrier to quality improvement within NHS England. In the context of clinical audit, securing medical engagement is critical to its long-term success because it helps to facilitate organisational learning so that the same errors are not subsequently repeated by others. By fostering open cultures medical engagement can help doctors to re-frame error as a learning opportunity.  By engaging doctors in this process, clinical audit goes beyond being a tool of quality control by providing a vehicle for continuous improvement in standards of diagnostic reporting.

This study from Ross, Hubert and Wong identified the barriers and facilitators of doctors’ engagement with clinical audit and explores how and why these factors influenced doctors’ decisions to engage with the NHS National Clinical Audit Programme. The study documents performance feedback as a key facilitator of medical engagement with clinical audit. It found that medical engagement with clinical audit was associated with reduced levels of professional anxiety and higher levels of perceived self-efficacy.