Effective audit: reporting to the National Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths.

An imperfect “PAST” Lessons learned from the National Review of Asthma Deaths (NRAD) UK

Asthma deaths are a barometer of the quality of asthma care. The principal care for patients with severe asthma is often a joint partnership between primary and secondary services. Communication between the two services determines the effectiveness of treatment. Undertaking an audit on asthma in either primary or separately in secondary care is a relatively straightforward process. However, whe...

In-hospital deaths as fraction of all deaths within 30 days of hospital admission for surgery: analysis of routine statistics.

Death rates after surgical care are increasingly analysed to estimate prognosis and for clinical audit and quality assessment. Expectations are growing among health professionals and the public that hospitals will know about, and learn from, the death rates of their patients. However, routine statistics commonly provide information only on deaths that occur during the hospital admission in whic...

Necropsies in clinical audit.

The need for specialised forms of clinical audit was highlighted by the report of the Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths (CEPOD). Necropsy rates in a Northern Ireland teaching hospital were studied with particular reference to perioperative deaths. To provide an overall context for these observations, the pattern of the necropsy services in Northern Ireland as a whole was also deter...

National repositories of information: a comparison of the National Practitioner Data Bank in the United States and the National Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths in the United Kingdom.

From CEMD to CEMACH to CMACE to...? Where now for the confidential enquiries into maternal deaths?

In Doctor Who, the world’s longestrunning science fiction television series [1], the Doctor ‘regenerates’ at intervals from one external form to another, represented on screen as the transition from one actor to another. Inside, however, it’s really the same old Doctor, fighting for good in a violent and unpredictable universe. The Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths (hereafter ‘the Enq...