Does Audit Improve the Quality of Care ?

BACKGROUND: The quality of health care and quality assurance are concepts which have been established for many years. Audit nowadays is adopted as a means of developing high quality care. AIM: This study aims to identify the perspectives of audit in practice and its relationship to quality assessment and assurance, quality improvement, and clinical effectiveness. METHODS: There were used the databases Medline and Cinahl to identify studies related to clinical audit. These databases were searched up to May 2009. DISCUSSION: Audit is used as a tool to assure and assess the quality of patient health care. It is also an educational tool as it creates a lot of opportunities for professionals to think about practice and to learn from the experience of others. CONCLUSIONS: Although that audit is a powerfull and useful tool to improve and evaluate the quality of health care, on the other hand there are many barriers that make its use difficult in everyday practice.