Audit in Auchendreich

Clinical audit, as all now acknowledge, must rise to fresh challenges if the exciting new concept of clinical governance is indeed to revitalise our NHS for its next five decades.

Fortunately for us, Auchendreich has for long been at the forefront of the field. Back in the 1960s one of our consultant surgeons had already devoted much of his working life to chronicling the fates of thousand upon thousand of the gall bladders of Auchendreich, together with those of their erstwhile owners.

His yellowing index cards, meticulously punched round the edges, and the famous knitting needles used to carry out his many pioneering analyses—at a time when computers were unknown in hospitals—are once more on display even as I …