Audit-specific guidance and standards
National, professional and local reference guidance for time to analgesia
- RCEM clinical standards and guidanceRoyal College of Emergency MedicineNational standards and guidance relevant to pain assessment and analgesia in the emergency department.
- NICE guideline NG193 — Chronic pain (primary and secondary) in over 16sNational Institute for Health and Care ExcellenceReference for chronic pain assessment and management where relevant to local context.
- NICE guidance on medicines optimisationNational Institute for Health and Care ExcellenceSafe prescribing, medicines optimisation and shared decision-making relevant to analgesia.
- British National Formulary — Analgesia and opioid prescribingBNF (NICE/RPS)Reference for analgesia choice, dose, route and opioid safety.
- Local trust pain assessment policyYour organisationLocal requirement for pain assessment — reference your trust's version.
- Local analgesia guidelineYour organisationLocal analgesia protocols, target times and escalation pathways.
- Local controlled drugs policyYour organisationGovernance around opioid prescribing, administration and storage.
- Local medicines safety policyYour organisationOrganisational medicines safety and incident reporting.
Recommended Lazomis QI Resources
Published guides from the Lazomis QI resource library
- Patient Safety · Guide
Designing Safer Clinical Processes: A Guide for Healthcare Teams
Delayed pain assessment, prescribing, administration, reassessment and escalation are process-safety problems requiring reliable workflow design.
Read guide - Patient Safety · Guide
Achieving Reliability in Healthcare Systems: A Practical Guide
Timely analgesia depends on reliable systems: prompt pain scoring, appropriate prescribing, medicine availability, administration without avoidable delay, reassessment and escalation.
Read guide - Quality Improvement · Guide
PDSA Cycles: A Practical Guide to Testing Change in Healthcare
Supports translating audit findings into practical improvement cycles such as triage pain-score prompts, analgesia-first workflows and reassessment prompts.
Read guide - Clinical Audit · Guide
How to Write a Clinical Audit Report: A Practical Guide for UK NHS Teams
Supports turning results into a structured audit report suitable for governance meetings, portfolio evidence or local improvement reporting.
Read guide