Auditing Breast Cancer Care

The Breast Cancer services in the United Kingdom, like other specialities, have been subjected to critical appraisal and scrutiny. A number of major policy guidelines, including those by the British Breast Gorup (1994) and the British Association of Surgical Oncology (1995) have established standards and recommendations reflecting the nature and quality of the servcie that should be provided for breast cancer management.

In order to evaluate the nature and effectiveness of breast cancer care, Breast Centres are required to gather data through AUDIT. Data derived can be used to carry out regional, national and multi-site comparisons and evaluations.

Auditing Breast Cancer Care is a handbook which:

• outlines the origins, value and applications of AUDIT
• establishes the role that AUDIT can serve in reflective practice and evidence based medicine
• provides a detailed account of an audit study comparing the management of screen detected and symptomatic cohorts of breast cancer patients
• provides a framework for the developing use of AUDIT in service provision