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Background
Acne vulgaris can have a substantial impact on a patient's quality of life; there can be significant psychosocial consequences and it can leave permanent physical scarring. Early and effective acne treatment is important.
Objective
To describe the outcome of an accredited clinical audit investigating general practitioner management of acne vulgaris and to provide an outline of current 'best practice' acne management.
Discussion
The audit was conducted over two cycles with GPs receiving educational material between cycles. Eighty-five GPs contributed data on 1638 patients. General practitioner management of acne was assessed against a set of preset standards and some acne treatment was found to be inconsistent with best practice, particularly for patients with moderate and moderate to severe acne, where many patients were either being undertreated or treatment with antibiotic therapy was suboptimal. It is likely that this treatment gap is overestimated due to practical limitations of the audit process; however, the audit revealed a need to address the main sources of apparent divergence from best practice to improve the quality use of acne therapies.
Keywords: education, medical, continuing; clinical audit; quality of health care; skin diseases, acne vulgaris
Acne vulgaris is a very common skin disease experienced by nearly all adolescents and can have a substantial impact on quality of life.1,2 Even though acne may seem trivial, the psychosocial consequences can be profound3 and severe disease can leave permanent physical scarring.4,5 Early and effective acne treatment can prevent or minimise such complications.6
The authors conducted a clinical audit, accredited by The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), to investigate general practitioner management of acne vulgaris.
The audit
The audit was prospective, fixed time and conducted online following the RACGP's five step audit procedure. General practitioner participation in the audit was voluntary, with advertising, direct mail and personal invitation used to recruit GPs.
General practitioners were provided with quantitative questionnaires and were required to evaluate their management of acne in 25 adolescent patients who had visible acne over two audit cycles (15 patients in cycle 1 [C1] and 10 patients in cycle 2 [C2]). The type and scope of data collected is summarised in Figure 1.
An education committee (comprising eight GPs) assisted with the development of the audit, determining the five standards...