Clinical Effectiveness

Supporting Improvement Through Evidence and Action

We support clinicians and colleagues in designing and delivering projects that measure and evaluate services in line with the Trust’s annual Audit and Improvement plan. We also provide support with data analysis, action planning, reporting and dissemination.

Listening, Learning, and Improving Together

It is important to continuously monitor effectiveness of services both to assure ourselves they are operating well and meeting the needs of our patients, and also to identify areas that we can improve or innovate. There are lots of indicators of effectiveness - these include:

Feedback from patients and families; and feedback from other organisations we work alongside
Equality and Diversity Indicators - are people easily able to access services equally?
Quality indicators (such as response to incidents, patient safety, CQC reviews);
Workforce indicators (sickness, turnover, staff survey results); performance indicators (waiting times, value for money);
Clinical and patient reported outcomes
Findings from Clinical Audits and assessments against Clinical Guidance such as NICE
Service Evaluations

At the Academy, we work with the teams that review all of these indicators of effectiveness. We specialise particularly in clinical audits and assessments and in service evaluations, working alongside services to build Audit, Evaluation and Improvement Plans, and providing training in relevant tools.

Examples of the
methods we use

Clinical Audit

Clinical audit is a way of checking if services meet local and/or national standards by looking at data. If results are below standard, then improvement actions must be planned and implemented. Then a repeat audit will show if the improvement has made a difference.

Explore Clinical Audit

Service Evaluation

Service evaluations use data and description to understand what is happening in a service. Types of Service Evaluation may include looking at a new service or comparing services. They may also ask patients about their experience now and ideas for the future.

Explore Service Evaluation

More information

NICE

Within our team, we monitor and disseminate updates to guidelines and standards produced by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. Where relevant, services are asked to conduct baseline assessments, audits and evaluations to measure and plan for compliance with these documents.

Training

Introductory audit and evaluation training is available for teams on request. A more interactive workshop on audit and evaluation is available where teams and individuals can develop their plans and ideas together. An online guide to conducting clinical audit or an evaluation is also available.

Supporting staff

Each year, an audit plan is produced and updated for each service line. These are available on the Trust's intranet pages. Throughout the year, support is available to identify topics for audits and evaluations and the most suitable methods to use. If you would like to undertake a project, please:

See if there is an audit on your local plan that you would like to support
Contact the Academy Audit and Evaluation team
Register your project using the form available on our intranet webpage

Supporting patients and the public

We welcome ideas from those that use our services for improvement, evaluation or audit, and can support anyone that would like to either be part of a project or even run one themselves. If you would like to know more or already have an idea, please contact us.