Monitoring Your Standard (2)

Abstract

Having written a standard, and developed a simple monitoring tool (the what, how and who of auditing), the next stage is to consider ‘how many’ or, how big does our sample for auditing need to be? Having considered what or who needs to be monitored and having considered that our monitoring may involve asking nurses or patients questions, how many nurses or patients should we ask? Alternatively, if choosing to monitor by observing particular interactions or interventions, how many episodes do we need to watch? Therefore what should the sample size be?