British Paediatric Neurology Association
Audit Matters

Audit Matters, November 2004

As mentioned in the Spring newsletter, the BPNA's Clinical Governance and Clinical Audit efforts have come together, with me as convener for Governance & Audit reporting to the BPNA Council, helped by a small working group. There is still time for enthusiastic volunteers to join, and we will be meeting formally on Thursday, 20 January 2005 at 3pm in the Institute of Child Health, London!

Governance
I think it is important that our Governance roles are supportive and help BPNA members rather than be regulatory. There seems no point in recording or duplicating the governance activities of individual consultants, departments, NHS Trusts, Royal Colleges, the GMC, the Department of Health or the national legal systems. I think the BPNA can help by:

In addition the CSAC assessments of units and training programmes could be used to encourage the local availability of locally modified endorsed guidelines and the participation of trainees in useful clinical audits.

Audit

  1. The G&A working group will update and look after the Clinical Tool Box (see www.bpna.org.uk), plan and lead multicentre clinical audits, and disseminate their results.
  2. Very few people have returned any data on EEG waiting times or MRI waiting times, in spite of the automatic entry of respondents into the Grand Prize Draws to win a bottle of bubbly. But it's not too late to enter - download the forms from the Clinical Tool Box and get your data to me by 20 January 2005!
  3. I would like to thank everyone responding to the questionnaire about steroid use in epilepsies. This will help us frame a multicentre prospective audit we hope to start in 2005.
  4. New data sheets for a 1st Clinic Attendance with Suspected Epilepsy are working well, at least in Nottingham.
  5. New data sheets for a 1 year follow-up of Suspected Epilepsy is being piloted and will be on line in 2005.
  6. Thank you all also for helping with the ADEM audit, which like the recent Acute Transverse Myelopathy Audit has been a pilot for a BPNA-SU.
BPNA-SU
Approval for setting up a BPNA-Surveillance Unit, similar to the BPSU or the ABN's surveillance scheme, awaits formal consideration at the next Council meeting in January 2005. Mike Pike and myself are currently developing a draft plan. More news on this and other developments will be in the Spring newsletter!

I would like to thank all those who have volunteered and helped over the last year, especially Mike Pike, Carlos De Sousa, Fenella Kirkham, Martin Kirkpatrick, Cathy White, Helen Cross, Colin Ferrie, Chris Rittey, Vijeya Ganesan, Karen Whiting, Adrian Hughes, Christian de Goede, Colin Dunkley, Santosh Mordekar, Deirdre Peake, Mudit Kumar and Nuno Cordeiro.

For information on current audit projects and any other ideas please get in touch.

Contact William Whitehouse (Nottingham) 0115 9249924 ext 44476 or william.whitehouse@nottingham.ac.uk