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Abstract
Objectives and Backgrounds What counts as quality or performance in the modern emergency department has changed since the inception of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM). Most if not all modern Emergency Physicians already know, that in addition to service provision, they are active and performing a number of other important domains: education and teaching research administration tasks crossing safety, risk management and continuity domains Professional development These other activities have previously not been formally recognised as valid performance measures.
Methods Emergency physicians at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in Australia embarked on a process to develop a national template to facilitate individual emergency department quality and performance and have this adopted by the ACEM RBWH is the largest adult emergency department in Australasia with 75 000 attendances and staffed by 18 FTE FACEMs. In 2009 a modified Delphi was undertaken following a review of the current literature to identify what could be considered important quality and performance indicators of a highly functioning emergency department. This led to the development of a unifying template the identified all the core areas where emergency physicians are active and are required to show performance in for continuing professional development compliance. These domains can no longer be considered incidental to service provision.
Results A template was developed with five core domains for emergency departments to show activity in: Quality and Performance Template (Figure 1) .
Conclusions The template was adopted by the ACEM Quality Sub Committee in September 2010 for further development as a standardised tool and template for promoting quality and performance in Australasian ED's. It will further be developed and enhanced by further research nationally and internationally as to its effectiveness and utility.