ANZICS Safety and Quality Committee  

The ANZICS Safety and Quality Committee was formed following approval of its terms of reference at the October Board Meeting and AGM in 2000.  Committee meetings are held three times a year to discuss the committee's current activities and other safety and quailty initiatives that may be of interest to the committee.

Terms of Reference

1.    To represent the interests of the Society in endeavors to establish and promote world best practice standards in intensive care medicine.

2.    To improve access to and awareness of important developments in healthcare safety and quality, by the membership.

3.    To lead and participate in the development and distribution of suitable tools for the monitoring of adverse incidents, safety, and quality in intensive care practice.

4.    To assist in the development of comparative measures which allow intensive care services to evaluate their performance against similar other services and national desirable benchmarks.

5.    To promote membership participation in the use of such appropriate means for measuring and comparing practice safety and quality.

6.    To develop the policies and practices of the Society which seek to establish appropriate levels of community awareness and participation in safety and quality processes in intensive care.

7.    To establish and maintain liaison with governments, health authorities, learned societies, and other non-governmental organisations on issues of safety and quality in intensive care medicine.

 Summary of Activities and Achievements in 2009:

•    Successful SQAO meeting in Queenstown in August 2009.  The conference will be held in mainland Australia next year and planning will commence shortly.

•    The point prevalence study into compliance with processes of care proposal has taken place and the preliminary results were presented at the SQAO Conference 2009.  These results suggest there is variable compliance in the ICUs surveyed.  More formal analysis of the data is now occurring with the results to be presented at the Perth ASM.  It is proposed that a paper will be submitted towards the end of the year. It is hoped that we will have enough data to support more research in this area.  Such work would continue to be a joint initiative with CTG, ICCMU and the ANZICS S&Q Committee.

•    Following discussion at the SQAO conference 2007, a questionnaire was developed which covered possible factors which contribute to VAP.  This survey has been distributed to the members of ANZICS & ACCCNand the data presented in at the SQAO Conference 2009.  The survey will be used to inform further work on process of care and VAP in general.

•    The committee is involved in the Safety Attitudes Survey being put together by Wendy Chaboyer and the ACCCN.  Preliminary results were presented at the SQAO Conference 2009 but more analysis needs to be done.

•    Discussions have been held with Prof Chris Baggoley, CEO ACSQHC, regarding the Commission’s work including handover, open disclosure, antibiotic stewardship and HAIs particularly Central Line BSIs.  Essentially the S&Q will work with the Commission towards developing a consensus statement on the prevention of CLAB, based on work being done in all jurisdictions.
 
•    The percutaneous tracheostomy statement is now in final draft and will be submitted to members for comment in the near future.

•    The Committee has had input into the questions for the Critical Care Resource (CCR) Survey for 2007-2008.
 

If you have a project that you feel may be of interest to the Safety & Quality Committee, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with details of your activities.