Clinical quality improvement and audit

Dr Myra Tilney was an invited keynote speaker at Clinical Audit 2005, held recently in Westminster, London. The conference organisers were Healthcare Events, specialists in the organisation of healthcare conferences.

Dr Tilney's presentation on "Clinical quality improvement and medicine: taking audit further" dealt with the application of quality improvement techniques to clinical practice and its organisation.

The conference brought together the key stakeholders in the area including the Health Care Commission, speakers from the various Royal Colleges, clinical directors and consultant physicians, surgeons and gynaecologists, healthcare practitioners allied to medicine, clinical audit and effectiveness managers, and patient representatives, who added their perspective to the debate.

Dr Tilney was also an invited panel member addressing the use of audit to manage and monitor performance.

The conference addressed recent developments in clinical audit, including more refined techniques, the legal and ethical issues with particular reference to data protection, patient participation, multi-professional audit, and audit moving into research. Various projects which have been shown to further raise standards of care were presented.

Dr Tilney is consultant physician, and lecturer in Medicine at the University of Malta; she also sits on the Specialist Accreditation Committee Appeals Board of the Maltese Medical Council.