Mr. John Connaghan:

I will start with a couple of remarks on the purpose of clinical audit and will then turn to colleagues who might be able to best tackle some of the detail. Clinical audit is the systematic review and evaluation of current practice against research-based standards with a view to improving clinical care for service users. That is the objective. Colleagues might correct me on this but one of the primary objectives in conducting the audit on cervical cytology was to feed back into the training of those who were interpreting those results, as well as furnishing the women concerned with the results of those audits. There is a dual purpose, based on my understanding. One of my clinical colleagues who has been involved in audit might want to make more detailed comments.