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The College considers that it should provide advice to Appointments Committees in Australia or New Zealand when appointments in anaesthesia are being considered. This is best carried out by designating a specific Fellow to work with or be a member of the Committee. When trainee appointments are being considered, the procedures laid down in the College document Guidelines for the Selection of Trainees should be followed. For Committees dealing with senior staff appointments, the following matters are relevant:

1.   The College representative should give advice on matters related to the qualifications and status of applicants.

In the case of specialist appointments, consideration must be given as to whether applicants:

1.1   Hold the Fellowship of this College or will hold that Fellowship by the date on which –he/she takes up appointment.

1.2   Hold another specialist qualification in anaesthesia. In this situation, the implications in respect of Overseas Trained Specialist Assessment by the College and registration as a specialist in Australia or New Zealand must be considered.

1.3   Have appropriate experience for the position under consideration.

1.4   Are participating in continuing medical education and quality assurance activities (including membership of the relevant College Continuing Professional Development Program).

2.   The College representative may be a full member of the Appointments Committee, in which case his/her other duties will be determined by the employing authority. The employing authority must be asked to determine the status of the College representative prospectively. In matters other than those stated in Item 1, the Fellow will be acting on behalf of the employing authority and not as an ANZCA representative.

3.   The nomination of Fellows to serve on Appointments Committees shall be made by Regional Committees or the New Zealand National Committee, and copied to the College for information.

4.   The College nominee must have knowledge of College guidelines on matters related to the duties of senior staff. He/she should not be a member of the Medical Staff of the hospital seeking the appointment. He/she should be a participant in a relevant College Continuing Professional Development Program.

5.   College nominees should serve in this capacity for a maximum of 12 years and should be in active practice. If the College nominee is unable to attend a meeting, he/she should seek permission to nominate a proxy after discussion as to an appropriate person with the Chair of the relevant Regional or National Committee.

6.   Fellows acting on Appointments Committees should be aware of the following:

6.1   Confidentiality and privacy must be maintained as part of the requirements of the employer.

6.2   Written documentation of all relevant decisions and of significant issues should be maintained by the employer.

6.3   Because of the significance of the matters considered, it is essential that the employer maintains fair procedures and follows due process.

6.4   If a College representative has any doubts about a process or decision, the matter should be formally discussed with the employer in the first instance. If the issues cannot be resolved, advice from the College should be sought through the CEO.

6.5   Appointments Committees must be free from bias. Its members must not have any relationship with an applicant which might prevent them from making a fair decision.

6.6   Appointments must be made strictly according to prospectively established, relevant and objective criteria. Matters considered by the Committee must be strictly relevant to those criteria. Irrelevant personal issues may be potentially defamatory.

7.   This document should be read in conjunction with the following College Documents:

TE6 Guidelines on The Duties of an Anaesthetist

PS1 Recommendations on Essential Training for Rural General Practitioners in Australia Proposing to Administer Anaesthesia

PS2 Statement on Credentialling and Defining the Scope of Clinical Practice in Anaesthesia

PS16 Statement on the Standards of Practice of a Specialist Anaesthetist

Overseas Trained Specialists - Assessment Process
Area of Need Process

COLLEGE PROFESSIONAL DOCUMENTS

College Professional Documents are progressively being coded as follows:

TE Training and Educational

EX Examinations

PS Professional Standards

T Technical

POLICY - defined as 'a course of action adopted and pursued by the College'. These are matters coming within the authority and control of the College.

RECOMMENDATIONS - defined as 'advisable courses of action'.

GUIDELINES - defined as 'a document offering advice'. These may be clinical (in which case they will eventually be evidence-based), or non-clinical.

STATEMENTS - defined as 'a communication setting out information'.

This document is intended to apply wherever anaesthesia is administered.

This document has been prepared having regard to general circumstances, and it is the responsibility of the practitioner to have express regard to the particular circumstances of each case, and the application of this document in each case.

Professional documents are reviewed from time to time, and it is the responsibility of the practitioner to ensure that the practitioner has obtained the current version. Professional documents have been prepared having regard to the information available at the time of their preparation, and the practitioner should therefore have regard to any information, research or material which may have been published or become available subsequently.

Whilst the College endeavours to ensure that professional documents are as current as possible at the time of their preparation, it takes no responsibility for matters arising from changed circumstances or information or material which may have become available subsequently.

Promulgated: 2001

Reviewed: 2006

Date of current document: Dec 2006

© This document is copyright and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part without prior permission.

College Website: http://www.anzca.edu.au/