Verification

Trauma Care Verification

Liverpool Hospital is the NSW Heath Department designated major trauma service for the South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD). It serves a population in excess of 1,000,000 across South Western Sydney, being a referral Hospital for two rural (Camden and Bowral) and three urban hospitals (Fairfield, Campbelltown and Bankstown). Patients with major burns and spinal cord injuries are secondarily transferred once stabilized, to one of the following centres depending on their associated injuries: Concord, Prince of Wales or Royal North Shore Hospitals.

Liverpool was one of the first hospitals to be verified as a Level I trauma service by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) when it originally underwent verification in 2002. This makes Liverpool Hospital one of the oldest trauma services in Australia. It has continued to be a National leader in trauma care over the last two decades and following another Verification visit in 2019, is currently the only formally verified Trauma Centre in Sydney and one of only two in NSW.

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. The program is truly multidisciplinary involving senior clinicians from the RACS, College of Intensive Care Medicine, Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, and the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

Trauma Verification benchmarks against international standards of care and overseas research has shown a beneficial impact on health management including:
  • Decreasing length of stay in Intensive Care Unit
  • Reduced expenditure and improved financial performance
  • Decreased mortality and morbidity rates
  • Improving patient outcomes
  • Defined specific trauma education and training needs
  • Greater focus on trauma care within the hospital

Over 60 visits have been conducted in hospitals in every state of Australia and both islands of Aotearoa New Zealand since the ANZ program started in 2000.

Download a map (PPTX 358.15KB) of Australian and New Zealand hospitals that have undergone Trauma Care Verification.

For further information regarding the Verification process please click here https://www.surgeons.org/en/research-audit/trauma-verification

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Dr Valerie Malka is the Director of the Trauma and Acute Care Surgical Unit at Liverpool Hospital. She was the previous Director of Trauma Services at Westmead Hospital for over a decade. She is an EMST Director and DSTC Instructor with a great passion for trauma and acute care surgery. With special interests in education and quality assurance she has worked extensively in patient safety and the maintenance of ethics in healthcare. Valerie has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Rescue Committee and holds a Diploma in International Humanitarian Assistance from Geneva University and a Master’s Degree in International Public Health with a major in Humanitarian Law. She also holds a Master’s degree in Journalism and works freelance writing medical, health and wellbeing articles.