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

Usha Mallick

doi:10.37591/jonsp.v12i1.2814

Abstract

Introduction: Audits are a method of evaluating the care process. It not only improves care qualitybut also helps nurses to acquire and use the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for creating ameaningful, productive, and satisfying working environment. A nursing audit is the process ofevaluating the quality of nursing care through the review of clinical records made by healthcareprofessionals. Objectives: (1) To measure the degree of quality of patient care against a definedcriterion. (2) To identify the gap between the care and the standards. (3) To improve the quality ofnursing care. (4) To find out the correlation between the demographic variables and quality nursingcare. Methodology: A quasi-experimental research study was employed. Four hundred nursing staffwere 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 structuredobservational nursing procedural checklist based on nursing manual was used to assess the quality ofnursing care. Data was analysed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The resultsshow 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 positiveimpact on quality of nursing care which improved for each nursing procedure from first month tothird month. The present analysis showed that nurses’ experience and age had significant positivecorrelations 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 auditcan be carried out by internal and external auditors. The result of the study shows that implementingof concurrent nursing audit has a leading role in quality improvement of nurses and that leads toquality patients’ care and enhances the patients’ satisfaction. Nurses can make them updated abouttheir knowledge and practices. Nursing audit serves as a valuable indicator to measure quality care.