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Trauma Care Verification

The ANZ Trauma Care Verification Program is a leading mechanism for quality improvement and endorsement of Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand trauma care.

Trauma care verification is an independent benchmarking process that helps to improve the standard of care for trauma patients. A multidisciplinary team is invited to  review a trauma service against international standards, identifying strengths and weaknesses and provides recommendations for potential further improvement. US studies have shown trauma verification-driven changes can reduce trauma mortality, hospital expenditure and length of stay.

Increasingly, the Trauma Care Verification Program is shifting its focus from individual trauma centres to entire trauma systems.

There are four levels of trauma care verification

Level I facilities provide the full spectrum of care for the most critically injured patient, from initial reception and resuscitation through to discharge and rehabilitation.

A Level II hospital should provide identical clinical care for injured patients to a Level I service, but not necessarily the same level of regional, research and education activities.

The major role of a Level III service is the provision of high-quality care to non-major level trauma, with the capability of stabilising major trauma patients prior to higher trauma level referral and transfer.

Level IV services are not intended to care for major trauma patients beyond a safe period of transfer, but are essential for those occasions where individual patients may present with major trauma or in rural situations where they are the closest hospital.

Please refer to the Model Resource Criteria for Trauma Services (PDF 336.93KB) for a full description of trauma verification levels.

Intercollegiate cooperation

The cooperation between the different clinical disciplines involved in care of multiple-injured patients has been the success of the program to date. The program is truly multidisciplinary involving clinicians from the RACS, College of Intensive Care Medicine, Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, Australasian Australasian College for Emergency Medicine and Australasian Trauma Society. Please see Statement of Support. (PDF 232.16KB)