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Guidelines for surgical audit in Australia and New Zealand

Version 2 2024-06-03, 18:37
Version 1 2017-07-26, 14:00
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-03, 18:37 authored by David WattersDavid Watters, AJ Green, A van Rij
Surgical audit is an important part of the process to measure performance, reduce clinical risk and improve quality of care. Recognizing this, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons established a Surgical Audit Taskforce as a subcommittee of the Board of Continuing Professional Standards. This study aims to review the recommendations of the Taskforce for data collection and peer review. The minimum data for whole-practice, continuing audit have been defined. The method of data collection, devices and databases are personal choices for the individual surgeon. However, there are many benefits of developing an electronic surgical audit, and these include facilitating comparison and sharing of audit data between units. Surgical audits should not only report on work carried out but also ensure that outcomes include key performance indicators such as major complications, readmissions, reoperations, transfers, incident reports, complaints and mortalities. Effective clinical governance demands that issues raised by audit need to be documented and reported together with recommendations for improvement. Surgeons should be proactive in helping to find and implement solutions to the issues arising from surgical audit.

History

Journal

ANZ journal of surgery

Volume

76

Pagination

78-83

Location

Milton, Qld.

ISSN

1445-1433

eISSN

1445-2197

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2006, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons

Issue

1-2

Publisher

Wiley