Page 11 - FSANZ AUTUMN -2023

RTAC Code of Practice review this year
The RTAC Australia and New Zealand Code of Practice is due for regular review this year after extensive COVID-19 pandemic disruptions to the process.
RTAC Chair, Dr Chris Copeland, reported at the FSANZ Annual General Meeting in November that the code was last reviewed in 2017, with the next review scheduled for 2020.
Notification of this review and a request for submissions were circulated in November 2019 with the aim of the completed document being available for the Society’s scheduled conference in August 2020.
With the onset of the pandemic, the conference was cancelled, and the review was postponed indefinitely.
As the COVID situation improved, the review was restarted on 1 October 2020. A final draft of the reviewed code was approved by the FSANZ Board in October 2021, and it came into effect in January 2022.
The review will return to its normal scheduling this year with an additional in-depth legal assessment of the document as outlined in the President’s Report.
Dr Copeland said the legal input aimed to address “interpretation matters” so that the code was clearer in its content ensuring a more consistent application of the protocols and procedures outlined in the document.
The RTAC International Code of Practice has also been delayed to this year to allow overseas units to regain normal practice in the wake of the pandemic.
Chris Copeland
Units in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have embraced the International Code of Practice, which includes regular auditing.
Meanwhile, RTAC is preparing a new Technical Bulletin that will address adverse events in clinical practice.
“Again, this is a matter of firming up on rules and protocols that some units in the past may have wrongly interpreted,” he added.
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