I only work part-time/as a locum in different practices. How will it be possible for me to conduct audit?

27 June 2011 (updated: 06 December 2011)

I only work part-time/as a locum in different practices. How will it be possible for me to conduct audit?

This poses different challenges. In order to overcome the difficulty of having very few patients it may be necessary to undertake a number of re-audit cycles of a number of criteria. You could consider starting with an audit on the management of an acute rather than a chronic illness e.g., antibiotic or analgesic prescribing, management of an acute sore throat etc.

You can design the audit to adapt to your consultations. For example, if you are seeing patients during the flu season, you could complete an audit on the flu vaccination guidelines - you could ask relevant patients as they attend if they have had the flu vaccination during the last flu season (data collection 1), offer the vaccination if relevant (action plan is opportunistic targeting) and record whether or not they had the vaccination during the current flu season (data collection 2/re-audit).

Alternatively, you could approach the practice in which you are conducting the locum work and ask them if you can join their audit or have access to conduct your own audit in their practice. In all instances, the relevant confidentiality, ethical and data protection requirements should be adhered to.

Click here to see more information for locum doctors on meeting their annual PCS requirements

Source: ICGP Director of Research