ABSTRACT
'Audit' is a portmanteau word, used loosely to cover a wide range of activities. Like the word 'health', it means different things to different people. There are good audits which have not been called audit, and we commonly see activities called audit which do not seem like audits. This chapter shows some of these activities, with a brief statement of purpose. Curing and caring for people is the reason we have a health service, and any time or money spent on activities which do not help people to live better and healthier lives is time or money wasted. Compared to research, audit is a very new activity, particularly in health care in the UK. Health care is very complex and what is known about audit and quality improvement largely rests on work in the private rather than the public sector and in less complex manufacturing industries.
