Ms Kate Schultz1
1Queensland Health, Brighton, Au
Biography:
Kate Schultz is the Director of Allied Health for Metro North Community and Oral Health, a large metropolitan public health service providing sub-acute, community and residential care with an Allied Health workforce of over 450 health practitioners and clinical assistants across 15 disciplines.
Kate has the accountability and a special interest in professional governance focused on ensuring appropriate systems and process are in place for the delivery of integrated safe and quality care and a culture of continuous improvement.
Abstract:
This presentation provides an overview to the approach to developing and implementing Allied Health profession specific clinical documentation audits within the health service, review identified enablers and barriers to auditing, determine the perceived impact of clinical auditing on professional practices and identify areas for improvement with clinical auditing.
Clinical documentation tools and processes were implemented in 6 Allied Health disciplines with the health service (Dietetics, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Psychology and Speech Pathology) to enable a systematic review of clinical care. Clinical audits have been determined to be valuable for reviewing elements of a clinician’s performance and for developing skills in self-reflection and identify opportunities for further education and training but to date have not been consistently applied to assessing profession specific practice standards.
During the trial period, January – December 2024, 419 clinical audits were conducted with 123 individual Allied Health staff audited. Feedback obtained from 109 staff audited and auditors indicates that clinical auditing is an acceptable and appropriate practice to assess the quality of documentation and as a vehicle to identify areas for improved professional practice.
Enablers and barriers to effective and efficient clinical auditing can be addressed by digital capabilities including access to electronic medical records and auditing tools, education and training on auditing processes and tools with clear guidelines and scoring parameters, staff engagement through articulating a clear purpose and intent, allocation of time and identifying key clinical leads with defined responsibilities for auditing and reporting, and of significant value formalised structured feedback processes.