Poster Presentation ANZTS Trauma 2024 Conference

State-wide Trauma Care Verification for New South Wales (21552)

Karen M Coates 1 , Stephy Jacob 1 , Zsolt Balogh 2
  1. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, East Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Trauma Care Verification is the gold standard for quality improvement and demonstrating excellence in trauma centres and trauma systems.  The Australasian program of external multidisciplinary peer review has been running since 2000 and over this time, 62 hospitals in Australia and New Zealand have participated in the program.  In 2021 the NSW Institute for Trauma and Injury Management, in collaboration with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, initiated a whole of state review to ensure that every trauma centre in NSW was evaluated.  Funding for the project was secured from the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority.  Over the next three years, 6 adult major trauma centres, 10 regional trauma centres, 2 paediatric trauma centres, 1 combined adult and paediatric trauma centre and 1 aspiring regional trauma centre underwent the process.  Major trauma centres were reviewed in conjunction with their networked referring hospitals.  All 20 hospitals engaged with the program.  This involved completion of comprehensive pre-review documentation and arranging for the review teams to meet with hospital executive and clinicians across the hospital involved in care of trauma patients.  Each onsite visit included four experts from fields including surgery, emergency medicine, intensive care, anaesthetics, and specialist trauma nursing and resulted in a comprehensive report describing strengths, opportunities for improvement and recommendations for improvement for each area covered.  This is the largest project undertaken by the Australasian program and establishes NSW as a leader in trauma care.  Preliminary findings from the reviews will be presented.