Implementation of Concurrent Nursing Audit as a Method for Developing Quality Nursing Care

Abstract

Introduction: Audits are a method of evaluating the care process. It not only improves care quality
but also helps nurses to acquire and use the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for creating a
meaningful, productive, and satisfying working environment. A nursing audit is the process of
evaluating the quality of nursing care through the review of clinical records made by healthcare
professionals. Objectives: (1) To measure the degree of quality of patient care against a defined
criterion. (2) To identify the gap between the care and the standards. (3) To improve the quality of
nursing care. (4) To find out the correlation between the demographic variables and quality nursing
care. Methodology: A quasi-experimental research study was employed. Four hundred nursing staff
were taken as the sample of the study. Non-probability convenience sampling was used for the study.
Data was collected through structured questionnaire for demographic variables and structured
observational nursing procedural checklist based on nursing manual was used to assess the quality of
nursing care. Data was analysed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The results
show that most of the samples {70% (280)} belong to female and majority of the samples {75% (300)}
were having 1 to 2 years of experience. Implementations of concurrent nursing audit had a positive
impact on quality of nursing care which improved for each nursing procedure from first month to
third month. The present analysis showed that nurses’ experience and age had significant positive
correlations with implementation of care indicators. The coefficient value ‘r’ ranges from 0.7 to 0.8.
Conclusions: Concurrent nursing audit is very important in day-to-day nursing practice. The audit
can be carried out by internal and external auditors. The result of the study shows that implementing
of concurrent nursing audit has a leading role in quality improvement of nurses and that leads to
quality patients’ care and enhances the patients’ satisfaction. Nurses can make them updated about
their knowledge and practices. Nursing audit serves as a valuable indicator to measure quality care.