Nursing Audit: An Integrating Review in Theses and Dissertations

Currently health services in Brazil undergo several transformations and challenges, not only in the technological scenario, but also in the provision of assistance aimed at reducing costs without compromising quality, requiring professionals to take a new dynamic in the assessment of care. It is in this context that the health audit has demonstrated that it is possible to provide patients with quality care at a fair and affordable cost. The audit is defined as a set of measures by which an internal or external auditor analyzes the operational activities, aiming to evaluate the quality of services offered and the origin of this practice since the beginning of economic activity [1,2]. The term auditor originated in England in the reign of Edward I, who named him who was responsible for holding public accounts and whose testimony would lead to the punishment of those involved in infractions. In Europe, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the beginning of the audit was with the bookkeeping carried out by bookkeepers, necessary for the Italian merchant, through the accounting field. At the moment when the bookkeepers stopped reporting the accounting activity to a single merchant and began to expand to various merchants, the advisory activity began, with records dating back to 2600 BC [3,4]. With the Industrial Revolution in the seventeenth century, this new modality of advice received guidelines for serving large companies, arriving in the United States of America in the period of the facilities of companies responsible for railroads. In England, it was only in the eighteenth century that the audit acquired a fundamental role in the emergence of renowned companies of the time, as well as the expansion of capitalism due to the need to evaluate the accounting records of taxation of income taxes and vessels, dominated the seas and controlled world trade at the time [3-5]. In Brazil, auditing had its beginning in the colonial era, but its practice was regulated after the year 1965, given the legalistic characteristics of the country. Moving forward with a trend that would consolidate in the later years, professionals and students of the accounting area published the first studies on the subject, in 1928. From 1945 that the audit discipline was inserted in the curricula of the courses of Accounting Sciences, named as Review and Accounting Skills [6].