“Audits must demonstrate a systematic review against national/local standards ensuring recommendations address the identified deficiencies. Monitoring of actions must be conducted by the governance team”
Ockenden report (published March 2022)
“There must be midwifery and obstetric co-leads for audits”
Ockenden report (published March 2022)
“Audit results “identify priorities for improvement, where unexplained variation in outcomes for women and babies exists. It also identifies good practice and detects gaps in policy and guidelines.”
National Maternity and Perinatal Audit (NMPA) Quality Improvement Plan
The new Maternal Care Bundle (MCB) is a nationally mandated clinical framework published in early 2026 and is designed to reduce maternal mortality, severe morbidity, and persistent inequalities in maternity outcomes. It establishes baseline standards across five critical clinical areas, which can be monitored and measured through standardised clinical audits to ensure safety and compliance.
Clinical audit is highly important as both a quality assurance and quality improvement tool within maternity services. However, recent high profile national publications by Donna Ockenden and Dr Bill Kirkup have identified sub-standard delivery of clinical audit within maternity services that need to be addressed. This masterclass will focus on best practice in clinical audit delivery and making sure audit is not a tick box exercise.
The trainers will share valuable tools and techniques to ensure you are designing and delivering an effective clinical audit programme. The emphasis of the course is on ensuring your organisations clinical audits are methodologically sound, providing the basis for meaningful action planning as part of wider improvement processes.
