What's the point of quality and safety auditing in healthcare if nurses don't use data to drive improvement? (1 July 2025)

Summary

Clinical audits are vital tools for improving quality and safety. They are designed to identify care gaps, inform practice improvement, and ensure accountability. Yet, in practice, the utility of audits are often limited by poor feedback mechanisms, redundancy and workforce disengagement. Nurses, in particular, frequently report audit fatigue and frustration when the same data are reviewed repeatedly without visible change. This disconnect between data collection and clinical improvement raises an important question: Are we auditing for improvement, or auditing for auditing's sake?