Standards of practice

We're responsible for setting the standards of clinical practice for anaesthesia and pain medicine in Australia and New Zealand. Our activities in this area include issuing safety alerts; developing professional documents; and overseeing incident reporting activities.

Our standards of healthcare and patient safety are among the best in the world and we're proud of the part we play in ensuring things stay that way. Through our committees and sub-committees, we oversee a range of incident reporting activities in Australia and New Zealand, as well as being responsible for reviewing, preparing and publishing policies, statements, and guidelines around anaesthesia, pain medicine and perioperative medicine practice. These activities are relevant to a wide range of health care practitioners. 

Standards for Anaesthesia

The Standards for Anaesthesia and its accompanying background paper are intended to apply to all those in clinical practice within the specialty of anaesthesia wherever anaesthesia services are provided. The aim is for these standards to be used as benchmarks to foster quality in patient care as well as to facilitate quality improvement. 

To assist fellows and trainees, the college has also developed a framework for understanding professionalism and performance as it applies to the practice of anaesthesia and pain medicine: Supporting professionalism and performance – A guide for anaesthetists and pain medicine physicians.