NACEL Celebrated in National Awards!

The National Audit for Care at the End of Life (NACEL) is in the spotlight this week, as part of a national campaign to underline the importance of clinical audit in improving patient care. The audit has been announced as a joint winner in the Communicating for Impact category of the Clinical Audit Heroes awards, an integral part of Clinical Audit Awareness Week. 

We are delighted to be awarded this Clinical Audit Heroes commendation, which recognises the range of innovative communication methods used to demonstrate the audit’s impact. By taking an evidence-informed approach to improvement, clinical audits help to target change where it will have the greatest impact. We recognise the hard work of staff in the Trusts and Health Boards who contribute to NACEL to make it such a valuable source of data to inform improvement work. To read more about the impact that NACEL has at a local level, take a look at our Impact Compendium

Clinical Audit Awareness Week is hosted by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) in collaboration with the quality improvement network N-QI-CAN, and has run this year from 2nd-6th June. It is designed to celebrate the role of clinical audit and quality improvement in improving healthcare services. 

More specifically, clinical audits review and measure healthcare, often in relation to local and national standards and targets. They are an effective way to determine if services are performing as they should and, if not, identify where changes are needed. They also help healthcare providers and patients alike to understand how their service is performing, and where improvements would have the greatest impact. As such, the work of clinical audit teams is essential, both as drivers of improvement in their own organisations and in supporting scrutiny of our health system at a national level. 

““Without clinical audit, we would lack the necessary insights to understand what is working well and, crucially, what is not. By measuring our healthcare services and tracking the differences that improvement activities make, clinical audits support us to maximise resources, and so contribute to saving and improving patients’ lives.””

— Chris Gush, CEO of HQIP

For more information on the national clinical audits that are commissioned by HQIP on behalf of the NHS, go to www.hqip.org.uk/national-programmes.To see the findings from this work, view the reports published on a wide range of clinical disciplines, ranging from asthma and diabetes to cancer and cardiovascular disease.  

Find out more about Clinical Audit Awareness Week and the Clinical Audit Heroes awards on the HQIP website. You can also join in the celebrations on social media using #CAAW25. 

Hospital/Site Overview data collection opens soon!

On 1st July, data collection will open for the Hospital/Site Overview and will remain open until 30th September 2025.
 
You can find the Hospital/Site Overview data specification on our data collection page, found here.

Participation update

Thank you for your contribution to NACEL 2025 so far.

We are now over 6 months into the data collection period, so this is a reminder to continue sharing all of your Case Note Review data. Here is a link to the Case Note Review data collection pages.

Please continue to gather feedback from the bereaved by sharing the NACEL Bereavement Survey. Here’s a reminder of tips & tricks that have worked well for some Trusts.

Sharing Good Practice in Quality Improvement

In the Hospital/Site Overview data collection, we asked hospitals to tell us what Quality Improvement work they had undertaken to improve PEOLC. From those responses, 68 hospitals were selected as examples of good practice and now feature in this year’s Good Practice Compendium (GPC). This is an interactive tool whereby one can select case studies by theme (e.g. recognition of dying) or QI intervention (e.g. education). You can find a link to the GPC below.

If you wish to contact any of the hospitals in the GPC, please send us an email so we can connect you: nhsbn.nacelsupport@nhs.net.