Australian Medical Association

AMA Vice President, Professor Geoffrey Dobb, said today that the AMA is urging Australians to use the Christmas holiday period to consider registering to become an organ donor.

Professor Dobb said that Christmas is a time of giving and a time when families gather together, making it the ideal time for people to choose to become a donor and talk to family members about supporting their decision.

The AMA has made an additional submission to the Department of Health and Ageing to raise concerns identified by AMA member junior doctors. This submission:

• emphasises the need to ensure that time-based targets do not impact on the ability of public hospitals to provide quality clinical education and training;
• calls for ongoing resources to support the ability of emergency departments, the hospital and community providers to fulfil education and training obligations; and
• recommends that the monitoring and evaluation of the impact of targets also includes the impact on education, training and junior doctor experiences.

This submission supplements the submission lodged by the AMA on 25 May 2011.

The AMA has made a submission to the Department of Health and Ageing, on the implementation of elective surgery and emergency department targets, which strongly advocates for an evidence-based approach to implementation. The AMA supports measures to improve the timeliness and quality of patient care in public hospitals but cautions against imposing arbitrary time-based targets that may carry more risks than potential benefits if they are not slowly, carefully and cautiously implemented.

MJA Release: Patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) after hours and on weekends have an increased risk of mortality, according to a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

MJA media release - Clinical outcomes and safety for stroke patients after thrombolysis in Australia are similar to those worldwide, according to research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Associate Professor Helen Dewey, Head of the Inpatient Stroke Service at Austin Health, Melbourne, and co-authors report Australian outcomes from the Safe Implementation of Thrombolysis in Stroke International Stroke Thrombolysis Register (SITS-ISTR).

This position statement sets out the principles the AMA considers should underpin the national introduction of time-based targets for public hospital emergency departments (EDs) in order that patient safety and outcomes, quality of care and the training of doctors are not compromised.

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said today that Labor’s emergency department package is a welcome boost to the pressured and overworked emergency departments in our public hospitals.

Dr Pesce said the new investment will increase the medical and nursing resources in emergency departments and provide a modest number of additional training opportunities in this area of medical workforce shortage for the additional cohort of medical students who are graduating from medical schools over the next few years.

“Emergency departments are at the frontline of public hospital services,” Dr Pesce said.

Doctors in hospital emergency departments are under increasing pressure from administrators to allow nursing teams to take responsibility for patients without being seen by a doctor.

AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, said the practice had come under scrutiny in NSW where it had been linked to the deaths of two patients.

AMA Position Statement: Ethical Considerations for Medical Practitioners in Public Health Emergencies in Australia - 2008

Introduction

The following is an excerpt from the college website and the training handbook.

The ACEM is an incorporated educational institution whose prime objective is the training and examination of specialist emergency physicians for Australia and New Zealand.