Clinical audit--linking continuing medical education (CME) and practice assessment (PA).

The Quality Assurance (QA) Program of the Royal Australian College Of General Practitioners has required doctors to engage in practice assessment (PA) activities. Clinical audit is one of these activities and has been used as an assessment tool in the Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine at Monash University, in impact evaluation of educational programs as well as a means of pooling morbidity data for research purposes and peer review. Examples of these uses of clinical audit are cited, with discussion in greater detail in relation to a dermatology course, cardiovascular risk factor detection and ongoing management of congestive cardiac failure. Doctors participating in these audit activities have almost invariably described them as a valuable reflective educational exercise with changes in clinical practice occurring after the audit in a number of instances.