The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) will kick off 2013 with a revised curriculum designed to reflect the expanding role of anaesthetists in practice.
ANZCA president Dr Lindy Roberts said the college wanted to ensure its program was contemporary, in terms of clinical content as well as its teaching, learning and assessment methods.
“ANZCA’s revised curriculum will be the first in the world to break the nexus between anaesthesia training and surgical procedures”, she said.
“Where other countries’ training programs are linked to surgical subspecialties — for example, anaesthesia for burns, cardiac surgery or neurosurgery — our curriculum will be based on anaesthesia clinical fundamentals, which define an anaesthetist’s scope of practice.”
The seven clinical fundamentals are airway management; general anaesthesia and sedation; pain medicine; perioperative medicine; regional and local anaesthesia; resuscitation, trauma and crisis management; and safety and quality in anaesthesia practice.
Dr Roberts said these reflected the growing role of anaesthetists and ensured the college produced specialists with broad experience across all areas of anaesthesia practice.
“This revision is also part of our ongoing commitment to ensure we produce anaesthetists who provide high-quality, safe care to patients.”
- Cate Swannell