Role of the nurse auditor in the reduction of costs and quality of care in health services

Introduction: Auditing has emerged as an important tool for measuring the quality (care auditing) and costs (cost auditing) of health care institutions. The quality of nursing audit in health services involves all the care provided by the multiprofessional team to patients Objective: To know the actions of nurse auditors for the reduction of costs and quality of care in health services according to the literature. Methodology: This is an Integrative Literature Review carried out independently in the electronic library of scientific journals SciELO and in the LILACS and MEDLINE databases. Twelve articles were found and the data were discussed in two analytical categories. Result: It was evidenced that nurse auditors act to reduce costs without harming the quality of patient care and that it is a fundamental tool for raising the problems presented in medical records, serving as a guide for the teams and for the institutions as to the appropriate annotations of the professionals' actions with ethical support. Conclusion: The practice of nursing audit is an essential tool in health services, not only to qualify care, but as a method for acquiring scientific knowledge, allowing learning to be associated with nursing practice.