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Clinical audit is a process that has been defined as a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change
The key component of clinical audit is that performance is reviewed (or audited), to ensure that what should be being done is being done, and if not, it provides a framework to enable improvements to be made. It had been formally incorporated in the healthcare systems of a number of countries, for instance in 1993 into the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), and within the NHS there is a clinical audit guidance group in the Clinical audit comes under the clinical governance umbrella and forms part of the system for improving the standard of clinical practice.