Clinical effectiveness is one of the three arms of healthcare quality defined by Lord Darzi in 2008 and can be defined as “Care which provides good outcomes, that is good results or success of care for patients. This can be assessed both through clinical outcome measures, such as mortality/survival rates, complication rates, and through patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) such as a patient’s assessment of their own symptoms and quality of life measures”. Clinical audit and the use of evidence based guidelines fall within this quality domain.
All doctors have a duty to understand, and participate in delivering quality, safety and clinical governance in modern healthcare as described in the General Medical Council’s (GMC’s) Good Medical Practice Domain 2.
This document aims to provide a simple overview of the principles and practice of clinical effectiveness and clinical audit for ophthalmologists.