National UK audit projects in anaesthesia

Audit has been defined as ‘a systematic approach to the peer review of medical care in order to identify opportunities for improvement and provide a mechanism for realizing them’. For some years, it has been expected that doctors in the UK will take part in audit as part of their professional responsibilities. A great deal of useful audit activity takes place at local departmental level, where work is typically criterion-based, that is, comparing practice to an agreed standard. There are also a number of well-established national initiatives of relevance to anaesthetic and critical care practice. Often, these are more concerned with establishing patterns and trends and making recommendations that lead to new standards for practice. The aims of this review are to describe these initiatives, summarize their recent findings and recommendations, and set them in context.