Dr. Karin Denton:

In many countries, the issues around doing a named audit are only just becoming apparent. There is a history of people thinking it would be a good thing to do and it is always with the best of motives. People want to learn about where things have gone wrong and how things could be improved, and perhaps use it to focus training or new skills development. However, it fails to think through some of the consequences or to plan in advance with how they will deal with the information. I believe that anonymised audits have been done in some places. It is not normal practice in the UK or any European country that I am aware of. The challenge is that it cannot be done in a completely anonymised way because it is not only about reviewing the cervical cytology preparations but also examining the patient history, when they attended for screening, whether they were invited correctly, whether the colposcopy and follow on investigations were done correctly, and so on. It is not possible to take one bit of the pathway and do that. To link all that information, it must de-anonymise it. It is very difficult to do a whole screening programme audit anonymously.