A clinician friendly computerised head and neck oncology audit: the first year results

Surgical audit is only as good as the information recorded and data entry is often onerous and the domain of the enthusiastic clinician or research follow. A head and neck oncology audit which incorporates a specific software program has been established in our department. The software interface increases the user friendliness of two conventional database systems, ACCESS and SUPERBASE and structures data input for the clinical situation. The program has been designed for ease of use by every clinician irrespective of their computer competence. The departmental prospective audit has been active since January 1993 and the essential details on new patient presentation, assessment, surgery and outcome for the first year are included in this article.