A formal audit as continuing medical education: anaesthesia for neurosurgery.

A brief description of the change from a normative evaluation to a formal audit of anaesthesia for neurosurgery is described. The criteria to be applied and their significance for clinical practise are listed. It is emphasized that these items are not presented as criteria for the standard of anaesthesia practised but as matters deserving debate among anaesthetists participating in a formal audit, particularly where the case load does not permit statistical analysis of patient outcome and only discussion of individual patients or small groups is possible. It is suggested, as it has been by others, that formal audit in a department of anaesthesia can be developed as the form of continuing medical education most closely related to the clinical work of the anaesthetists working within it.