25 years of the National Comparative Audit

The National Comparative Audit (NCA) of Blood Transfusion programme is funded by NHS Blood and Transplant which offers 2 or 3 audits every year to NHS and independent hospitals in the United Kingdom, and sometimes to other countries.

Clinical audit is about assessing practice to check that healthcare is being delivered in the way we would wish it to be delivered, and the programme has 2 main objectives – to save and improve patients' lives, and to protect the blood supply.

The programme content is steered by representatives of the UKs' medical royal colleges, as well as medical societies and associations. The blood services in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales also have input to it.

Today’s audits focus more on Patient Blood Management by different clinical specialities, and the challenge for audit is hospital practices vary because of the way they are funded, and individual clinical practice also varies because of local guidelines, and clinical freedom.

How the NCA programme makes a difference:

it contributes to guidelines
means we can present arguments for change at national and international conferences and by publishing in high impact journals
we can influence the training of doctors, nurses, and scientists

What we have achieved:

created the largest clinical audit of blood transfusion
conducted 41 audits
performed the first ever national audit of clinical audit – the AFFINITIE programme
invented QuickAudit – a tool to allow real-time audit feedback
provided evidence to the UK Infected Blood Inquiry
conducted and published a global survey on the response to the COVID-19 outbreak