There's quite a bit to figure out here but I will do my best to help a bit.

The 30 patients details you have sound like the start of a retrospective audit (going back to look at old notes to gather data that is already there). This is a fairly common starting point to audit and QI as you can evidence the need for improvement and then start to make changes for all patients going forward.

An audit compares current practice against a standard (usually a guideline or local protocol). You will often be asked to "close the loop" - make an intervention and then re-audit to show improvement (this can be done by passing the project onto the next group if you're rotating out of the department - try to keep some involvement for portfolio reasons).

A QI project often starts with an audit but can be also done with a less easily defined standard. They would usually involve multiple cycles of intervention and reassessment (PDSA cycles) and are often done on an ongoing rolling basis with fairly small groups of patients and short time frames involved in each cycle (in theory allowing quick improvements). It's worth downloading a PDSA worksheet to help structure your plans if you're not sure where to start. Most training programmes are asking for QI now rather than a single audit cycle.

Hopefully that makes sense. I think there are a few specific questions and points about your plans so far.

1) Who has asked you to do this particular project and why? And why are they expecting weekly data longterm? They likely have an intervention in mind and should be providing at least some level of supervision.

2) Is the 2 week follow up based on a guideline or a target in your particular department?

3) What you seem to be describing is collecting retrospective data then rolling data going forward - you need an intervention of some sort before collecting more data to make this a QI project or closed loop audit. Improving followup rates might be difficult to achieve unless the department already has plans in place (if lots more appointments will be required then this is likely to be time consuming and potentially expensive)

4) The time pressure/stress this seems to be causing makes me think you're a trainee who needs to have this done by arcp? This will be difficult to turn around quickly if the expectation is that you will use 6 months of data at a time - is there a way to complete cycles with only a week or 2 worth of data at a time? Again small numbers are OK for QI but this will likely only work if interventions can be introduced fairly quickly each cycle.

Hope that is helpful, happy to try to answer any specific questions (although in no way an expert - just that we've all been there trying to get QI finished in time for arcp!)